


The Mysterious Human Heart in New York

by st_aurafina



Category: Person of Interest (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Role Reversal, Arson, Drug Use, F/F, F/M, Gen, Gunshot Wounds, Harold is Harold, Intimate Partner Violence, Jessica is the assassin, John is the nurse, Rescue, Role Reversal, Show-typical violence, Suicidal Ideation, some stabbing
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-25
Updated: 2021-02-25
Packaged: 2021-03-16 01:36:04
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 13
Words: 32,488
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29693052
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/st_aurafina/pseuds/st_aurafina
Summary: Jessica Reese was never meant to survive Ordos. She might not survive long in New York, not with Kara's bullet in her belly, but she wants to see John one more time, to make sure he's safe and happy.Harold Finch has a new number: John Arndt, a married ER nurse living with his husband in New Rochelle.It's a partnership that was meant to happen.
Relationships: Jessica Arndt/John Reese, Jessica Arndt/OFC
Comments: 11
Kudos: 20
Collections: Person of Interest Big Bang 2020





	1. Chapter 1

[ ](https://imgur.com/SVRFLkP)

Jess still has mud from Ordos between her toes the day she lands at JFK. The photograph on her fake passport is of a businesswoman, and reassembling that persona takes forever in the tiny plane bathroom. It's the first time she's styled her hair in a month, the first time she's worn perfume in three.

The bullet hole in her belly aches constantly, but she downs a couple of oxycontin for the pain along with a snoot of cocaine to counter the sedation, and she's ready to go. She assumes a lofty demeanour, with her stolen rollaway luggage and her glass jewellery, and breezes towards the queue for entry into the USA. 

The passport holds. She makes it all the way to the line of cabs without starting to fade. She falls asleep on the way to New Rochelle.

The motel is ugly, sparse and cold, but the sleep she gets there is the best she's had in weeks. She tells herself that this feeling of security is thanks to her good work, her own care and planning for this eventual departure from the agency. If she hadn't organised those papers in Turkey, if she hadn't made sure to always keep an exit strategy in play, she'd be dead in the mud in China.

In the middle of the night, lit by reflected neon creeping in through the worn curtains, Jess admits to herself that it just feels better to be closer to John.

John is on a night shift rotation at the moment, so he arrives at Montefiore-New Rochelle hospital at around 9:30 at night. He's still driving the same black truck Jess saw the last time she checked in on him. It's in good shape, despite the years, but then, John takes care of his things.

From between two SUVs, Jess watches John park, grab a backpack from the passenger's seat, click the remote to lock the truck. He has good awareness of his surroundings, chooses the best-lit end of the parking structure, walks quickly and easily towards the elevator. That's good. He's not a soldier anymore, but he hasn't let those habits lapse.

"Hey, John!"

Jess jumps and then for a few seconds she's doubled over, seeing stars. She hears footsteps over the concrete, and for a confused moment she thinks that John has seen her, is coming to talk to her.

"You had that head trauma kid yesterday, didn't you?" The voice came from a tall slender black woman. She's in scrubs, with the same lanyard round her neck as John's, and obviously on her way home. "She came through the surgery okay, they're transferring her to Pediatric now – I thought I'd tell you before you walk in and see her gone." 

Leaning against the muddy tire, Jess brings her knees to her chest, presses her mouth into the cloth of her pants to stop herself from crying out. 

"Thanks." John's voice is the same – easy, gruff, with a recognisable kindness to it that used to make Jess glow. "Little fighter, that one."

"Yeah," says the female nurse. "She's still got a long road ahead of her."

"Better than no road," John says.

The really scary thing for Jess is that in the moment when she thought he was coming over, she felt relief. At least it would be over. She would finally have to tell John everything. She digs nails into her hand, bites the side of her cheek, tries to get a bit of adrenaline going so that she can extract herself from the situation before she gets everyone killed.

By the time she claws her way back to her feet, John has gone on into the hospital. There's nothing else to do but go back to her cheap motel. 

It's still dark when Jess wakes up with her hair plastered to her face and her head floating somewhere up around the popcorn ceiling. The fever is back. She's going to need to track down another round of antibiotics. Another break and enter at a veterinary surgery.

"Fuck you, Kara," she says, and laughs. "Of all the times not to take a headshot." 

It's really hard to stop laughing. Jess forces herself to take a cold shower, throws down aspirin and a sachet of motel instant coffee made with cold water. By the time the sun comes up, she's had an amazing, hilarious idea. She's going to the ER. For real, this time, as a patient.

When she gets there, it's the middle of the day. John will be home and sleeping. She'll get some antibiotics, properly targeted IV meds, not random vials stolen from veterinary surgeries in Beijing. Maybe she'll even get an x-ray, and finally see if there are fragments of Kara's hollow point floating inside her.

It's weird to walk in through those sliding doors like a regular person. Jess has come to New Rochelle now and then since John moved to the East Coast, but always surreptitiously, always hiding from both John and the agency. Kara knows, but they'd worked out their issues on this matter early on in their working relationship. Jess is pretty sure that Kara haunted her own family from time to time. As long as neither of them crossed that line, as long as it was just to watch, it was acceptable.

This is so wrong, Jess thinks, settling into the plastic bucket seat in the waiting area. This is more than fevered thinking. This is suicide. It's so liberating.

There's a TV hanging above the admissions desk, and in the middle of the day, it's blaring some made-for-TV disaster movie. Jess keeps her head turned in that direction, but even with a fever, she's still alert for danger.

The triage nurse knows exactly what the wound in her belly means. Sitting on the exam bed, Jess sees his expression change as soon as she lifts the hem of her sweater. He glances up at her face, back at the weeks-old perforation that has scabbed over and opened up multiple times. He's clearly organising words, gauging the best way to broach the subject.

The aim of the game in getting people to do what you want, Kara would have said, is to convince them that what you want is the right thing to do.

"Please," Jess says, her voice high-pitched. "You can't report this. I didn't want to come in at all, but it just… It hurts so much." It's easy to let emotion thicken her words, to let loose the tremor she's been feeling on and off since Ordos. Her hands tremble on the hem of her sweater where she's holding it up. "It was an accident," she says. "He… he wasn't serious about it."

"Cady." Cady is the name she's using. The triage nurse's badge says Raoul, and he has a tiny scar in the shape of a Y distorting his left eyebrow. A knife, thinks Jess. Or maybe a piece of glass. She needs to stop burning through her fake IDs. She's running out of aliases, and now that she's on the run from the agency, it's going to be tricky to make more.

"The mandatory reporting is there for a reason," Raoul says. "You have a right to safety. And so do we." He presses gently on the edge of the wound and Jess lets herself flinch. He sighs, and touches her shoulder. "Let's work on getting you feeling better, and we can talk about it later today."


	2. Chapter 2

It's a big ER, Jess thinks, lying on her treatment bed later, watching the steady bustle of competent people in multi-coloured scrubs. She tries to imagine John moving amongst them, standing in the central bullpen, or greeting a crew of paramedics at the ambulance entry. It whiles away the time as the antibiotics and the fluids trickle into her body. They took x-rays, but Jess hasn't had a chance to see them yet.

There's a plastic cover under the linen pillowcase and it rustles every time she moves her head. Somehow, despite this, she manages to drift off to sleep.

"If I bring it up first, he's going to think I was snooping around in his business."

It's a man's voice, a low and familiar rumble, a sound Jess has fallen asleep to before. She drifts in and out of sleep listening to it, half expecting a warm hand to brush the hair out of her eyes, or a bristly cheek to rasp against her shoulder blade.

"Well, John," a woman says, her own voice low too, the sotto voce of two people engaged in a personal conversation. "I'm not defending him, but Peter's got a point there: you found that secret account because you were snooping in his business."

John. Jess's instincts finally kick in, and she can hold herself still, assess the situation around her before she moves. John is here. How long was she asleep?

She rolls slowly onto her side – no sudden movements, nothing that will attract the attention of a former soldier, or a current nurse – and lets her hair fall over her face. There's a time display on the IV stand; it's two hours before John's shift starts. She's been asleep for at least three hours.

John is sitting the wrong way on one of the desk chairs at the nurses' station with his forehead resting in his palms. Beside him, the nurse with the buzz cut from the night before rubs his shoulder.

"It'll be okay," she says. There's a gentle, casual sympathy to her voice, the kind of commiseration that suggests they've worked together for a long time, have learned all the ins and outs of each other's personal lives. "These kinds of secrets, they need to be out in the open or they fester. You know that."

Jess wants to stay, wants to eavesdrop on this deeply personal conversation, which makes her hate herself on many levels: for intruding on John's privacy when she has no right, for dwelling on the past, for risking discovery. For drifting around, useless and gut shot, mooning over a lover who has moved on. For having no plans for the future without the agency that betrayed her. For not shooting first, back in Ordos.

"Get up," she says to herself. "Get up and get out of here, John doesn't need this on top of whatever drama he's dealing with."

She chances one more glance at the central station: John and the other nurse are going through charts now, heads together over a tablet. It's a good time to make a move. She slides her feet out from under the covers and into her shoes, then considers the IV. It's doing her good; she feels better for the little she's had so far. She unhooks the bag, loops the tubing up and covers the whole thing with her coat. Slipping out of her treatment room is easy: she waits until John and his friend are talking to a patient in another treatment room, grabs a handful of files from the central area, and walks with purpose to the ambulance entrance.

She's almost clear when she hears a nurse ask whether Cady was using the bathroom. Then she's got maybe a two-minute window while they check the bathrooms, before they launch a full-scale search for their missing GSW patient. The ambulance entry has a walk-in utility closet, for ease of cleaning the inevitable and large blood spills after the paramedics have handed over their charges. It's locked, of course, but it's a standard lock, and Jess works it over in less than thirty seconds with the picks she keeps in a manicure kit in her purse. Then she's inside.

It's not as dark as it should be in this closet, and that's because she's not alone. There's a man in a high-vis orange jacket, with a hospital lanyard round his neck and a headlamp like cavers wear.

Jess blinks in the bright light and then instinct takes over. She grabs the man before he can act, gets him pinned to the shelves. The light from the headlamp dances frantically around the closet and a few plastic bottles of cleaner tumble to the ground as the other person, a man, struggles in her grip. She's almost as tall as him, but he's not strong or co-ordinated and she easily gets her elbow under his chin and leans into it.

The movements are automatic: isolate his hands, stop him drawing a weapon, restrict his breathing, hold him still. The door locked behind her, so there's no need to watch her back. She's not armed – she didn't expect trouble, which says a lot about her current state, since she's trained to always expect trouble – but she hasn't needed a gun to kill, not for many years.

The IV bag drops to the ground and she ignores the tear at her forearm as the line pulls free, but the guy is still, his eyes wide behind his glasses. Jess takes a moment to check the rest of the room, see what he was doing in here, in the dark.

One of the ceiling panels is displaced, and a bundle of data cables as thick as an arm loops down into the room. There's a wallet of tools open on an empty shelf next to the cables, laid out like a surgeon's instruments. Jess eyes the cables, and then more closely at the man. Shit. She's intercepted a tech support worker.

The man's face is very red, and his eyes are bulging a little, so Jess eases back the pressure on his throat. She should make a decision, but her head is thumping from all the adrenaline needed to immobilise someone. Should she go for bluster? Pretend that she's meant to be here as much as he is? Should she just knock him out and leave him to be found? The space inside the utility closet is too close suddenly.

It helps that the man seems as bewildered by her. Jess decides to gather more facts before she deals with the situation. While the tech stares, she slides a hand inside his jacket, checking him for weapons. The name on his lanyard is Harold Tanager. Something bothers her about the photograph, but she can't place what it is immediately. There's sweat pricking under her hair, and the nausea that had been blessedly offset by meds rears its head again.

"You startled me, Harold," Jess says, her voice much calmer than she feels. "You need to put up a sign when you're working behind a closed door." Then she frowns, as her fingertips brush silk and fine cotton under the jacket. She pulls the orange plastic aside, and sees a paisley silk waistcoat, a duck-egg blue tie and a shirt with a pale lavender pinstripe. The stitching is very fine, the cotton almost translucent. She realises what's wrong with the photograph: it's of these clothes, this incandescently expensive waistcoat, this three hundred dollar tie. Harold's ID photo is only as old as today's wardrobe.

She can't help a smile of triumph as she opens her mouth to point out that he's not supposed to be here either, but then she hears footsteps in the corridor outside the door.

"No, she's not here," she hears someone say. Then she hears John call out. 

"Check the utility closet," he says. "You had a bus come in a few hours ago – it might have been left unlocked. Have we heard back from Security yet? There's no way she made it out without getting caught on camera."

The door handle rattles vigorously, up and down, and Harold Tanager watches Jess with wide eyes. It would be so easy for him to give her up. It would be as easy for Jess to give him up. In this moment, though, they're suddenly allies. Whatever Harold is doing in this closet, it's bad enough that he doesn't want to be caught doing it.

"It's locked!" calls the nurse outside the closet door. "I'm going out to the street, see if I can see her. The state she was in, she's not going far."

_Oh, that's right_ , thinks Jess, _she's talking about me. I'm not going far._ Then the adrenaline drops out and the pain kicks in.

Harold Tanager catches her by the forearms, helps her fold to the ground. "Easy," he says, "Easy now, Ms Reese."

Jess's head spins. He shouldn't know that name. He shouldn't be here. There's blood on his palm and the smear of red holds her gaze like a magnet.

Harold follows her line of sight, sees the blood, and reaches inside his high-vis jacket for a handkerchief. Jess expects him to clean his palm with it, but instead, he holds her forearm gently in one hand and presses the white linen to her skin where the IV ripped out. A bright red circle starts to spread from the centre of the white square.

"How do you…" Jess supposes he's from the agency, though he's not built like any agent she's ever met. He dresses like a banker. His suit says he's the kind of banker who can destroy an economy with a pen stroke.

"You're going to ask me how I know that name," he says. "And I am happy to answer that question, but right now I would very much like to intercept the security camera footage that your friend has requested." He reaches for her other hand, and presses it onto the handkerchief. "Keep the pressure on. I think it's in both our interests to leave as little biological evidence as possible. If you'll excuse me?" He points at the coil of cables above Jess's head.

Jess shuffles obligingly out of the way, and Harold goes to work, snipping cables, wiring a handheld device into the circuit, and then tapping away on the tiny keyboard.

"I know that you are a former CIA agent, and that your last mission went awry. I'm not sure what your injury is, specifically, but I know that Ms Stanton and you were ordered to eliminate each other. And you are both very efficient operatives." Harold is clearly a multi-tasker: he types and talks, glancing occasionally down at Jess to make sure she's following. "Did she survive, also?"

"I doubt it. There was a missile strike." She hasn't had time to mourn for Kara. She finds it difficult to articulate her feelings about Kara Stanton, but there's a certain intimacy that comes from killing people together, and sooner or later, she's going to feel Kara's loss. She wondered how that will feel, mourning for someone she couldn't decide if she loved or hated.

"I think it would be detrimental if Mr Arndt were to see you here in his ER," Harold says. Jess has to take a moment to think about that, about hearing John's name appended to that of his husband. She knows about it, intellectually. John's family name is a reminder of pain and loss. On their last holiday, in Mexico before the towers came down, he'd talked about taking Jess's name. "Save my name for the babies," he had said, and laughed, ticking the skin over her belly. 

Jess had been appalled at the idea of marriage, of children, of settling down. She had still been trying to convince people to let her try for Special Forces, still clinging to her fantasy of being the first female soldier to wear the Green Beret.

"Who are you?" Jess says to Harold.

Harold talks through a mouthful of tools. "I'm someone with a vested interest in John's safety, Ms Reese. I believe that he's in danger."

That's so ridiculous that even through pain and fatigue and fever, Jess can find a laugh. "John in danger? From what? A Sherman tank?" Before he retired, before he studied nursing, John had been almost as deadly as Jess is now.

It's the serious expression on Harold's face that convinces Jess that he at least believes he's telling the truth. She's not sure what John did to get himself a stalker. No, that's not true. John is exactly the kind of person this happens to.

"When you appeared, I thought he might be in danger from you, Ms Reese."

Jess can't even disagree with him. Even if she would never hurt John herself, she's dragging a lot of bad baggage just being here. "I'm not a threat to him," she says. "But the people I work for – worked for – are dangerous.

"I agree," Harold says, still typing. He glances in her direction, though his fingers keep moving on the tiny keypad. "But I don't believe they're searching for either you or Ms Stanton. I know that it doesn't necessarily represent the intentions of your superiors, but plaques have been ordered for the Memorial Wall at Langley, with your names on them. Mark Snow is already working with a new team."

Jess rolls her eyes at that. Sitting still in the dark of the utility closet is helping with the nausea and even a half-dose of IV fluids and antibiotics is obviously doing something. Though she'll have to pee soon. Rehydration is like that.

"Why are you doing this for John? Is he a friend?" She can't think of where or why John would have met someone like this. She can't think how anyone meets someone like this, actually.

Harold snaps his folding keyboard closed and tucks it into one of the huge pockets on his high-vis jacket. "I would be happy to discuss all of this with you, Ms Reese, but perhaps we can do it at a more opportune time." 

He puts a hand inside the jacket and Jess tenses up, though she knows he's not carrying. Harold freezes immediately.

"I didn't mean to startle you," Harold says. "I'm reaching for a business card, so you can contact me, if you would like?" He waits for her to nod, and his hand withdraws from an inner pocket with a white rectangle which he passes down to her.

It has no name, just a cell number. Jess holds it between two fingers examining first it, and then him, watching to see what he does next.

"Can you be ready to leave in two minutes?" he says. He offers a hand to help her up. She refuses.

"What happens in two minutes?" She's incredibly tired, and the wound itself is a steady ache, but she can finally think. This man is no physical threat, but he knows too much about her and about John. She needs to keep him engaged, to find connections, learn why he's here.

Harold watches the second hand on his watch. "A distraction," he says. "The security cameras have been neutralised, and today's digital footage erased. There will be no way for them to identify you now." He shrugs. "Or me."

Jess is annoyed. She doesn't want to be impressed, but he's organised this exit very neatly.

"Ten seconds," Harold says, and unlocks the door very quietly. "Three, two, one."

The bar of light under the door goes dark. Jess hears shouts and groans from the central bullpen, then a hum as the generators kick in and emergency lighting flicks on. Harold opens the door and turns for the ambulance entry. He limps as he walks, one leg held stiffly, one hip that doesn't move right. Still, he makes quick progress towards the rectangle of daylight that is the ambulance drop-off point. After a moment, Jess follows him. Behind her, she can hear John calling orders out, as brisk as a drill sergeant. She chances a peek through the glass doors, and sees him jogging down the corridor. She ducks into the hedges that surround the entrance.

She stands still, watching him through the foliage, barely breathing. He looks left and right, then checks the roof of the alcove over the ambulance entry. He knows something is up, he knows that a missing patient followed by a convenient blackout is no coincidence.

After a few minutes, face dark, he goes back into the hospital. Jess is irrationally guilty for her part in interrupting the hospital he clearly loves.

Harold, of course, is long gone by the time she eases her way out of the hedge and leaves the grounds.


	3. Chapter 3

Jess waits a full twenty-four hours before she calls that number. In that time she gets eight hours of undisturbed sleep, and takes a long, luke-warm shower. It's good to finally feel well enough to wash properly from head to toe, and to watch the last of the mud from Ordos vanish down the drain. That half-dose of antibiotics has worked wonders overnight, and in clean clothes, Jess feels almost human. She drops her stolen car at the Park and Ride, buys herself a burner phone, then goes to find a place that serves breakfast all day. It might be afternoon, but she's still on China time.

Over pancakes and bacon, she considers her options and makes a list. Getting hold of more antibiotics will have to wait until after dark, but there are plenty of veterinary clinics here. Citizens of New Rochelle like to spoil their fur-babies.

Harold's card she leaves propped against the napkin dispenser while she eats. This man is odd. He's neither fish nor fowl; there's something too humane about his way of operating for him to be attached to an embassy or agency, but neither can Jess classify him as a civilian. His interest in John is peculiar, and Jess tries to find ways to put the two people together. He's obviously invested in John's wellbeing. Jess has a good sense for people after so many years in the CIA, and while she doesn't trust Harold or believe the story he told her about John being in danger, she doesn't think he means John harm, either. Which leaves what, exactly? What is his interest?

Tanager is an improbable surname. Jess would know; she's had plenty. A quick search turns up two Tanagers listed in New York, though neither of them is called Harold.

She thinks about Harold's limp, evidence of a serious injury. His movements were awkward and uneven, as if he wasn't quite used to them. Perhaps the injury was recent. Maybe John helped him through a difficult time, and now Harold has formed an attachment. That doesn't give her much to search, though. She needs more intel to solve the mystery of Harold Tanager.

When she calls the number, it is picked up on the second ring.

"Ms Reese." Harold's voice is calm on the line, though Jess can hear the soft, rapid clicks of a keyboard in the background. "How are you feeling today?"

"A lot better, thank you," Jess says, because it hurts nobody to be polite. "You said you were willing to share information on John's situation. I'd prefer to meet in person rather than have a conversation like that over an open line."

"I understand," Harold says. "How would you like to facilitate such a meeting? I understand that you'd prefer a public space, but I would, myself, prefer somewhere that we won't be overheard."

He's multitasking, Jess thinks. There's something distant in the way he speaks, a detached over-formality to his word selection that suggests there's more than one thing happening wherever he is right now.

"I find the park is best for that kind of thing," she says. "Bethesda Fountain. Let's say noon tomorrow, since you're busy today?" That last comment is a gamble, since she doesn't really know anything about this man but she can hazard a few guesses. That blank white business card, devoid of any identifier but the number, is mocking her right now. She wants to give Harold Tanager a little poke, let him know that she's a clever little spy too, and can find things out that he doesn't want her to know.

The little pause before Harold speaks tells her that she's hit a tender spot, and she grins. "Bethesda Fountain it is," he says. "Perhaps there's even somewhere we can eat that doesn't serve an all-day breakfast." 

Jess hangs up and laughs. 

The next day, she spots Harold sitting at a bench off the main walkway, beside the pedestrian underpass. Superficially he passes as just another businessman, until you notice the scarlet pinstripe in his suit, the elegant dove-grey satin waistcoat and pocket square. He has an open book on his lap, and a brown paper bag sits on the bench beside him.

Jess stands on the bridge above Bethesda Terrace for a while, observing him. In bright daylight, with a flood of tourists streaming constantly past, he looks perfectly normal. Perhaps a little overdressed, but he's not the only man in a three-piece suit taking a lunch break in the park today. 

Jess is dressed for tourism, herself, in a flouncy sundress and a short jacket to cover the holster on her shoulder. She wears a cheap pair of sunglasses she picked up at Grand Central, and her hair is pulled into a kicky pony-tail that swings from side to side as she walks. Her footwear is incongruous, especially on this sunny day, but she'd rather wear boots she can run in.

She left her burner phone in her motel room, but Harold closes his book at her approach and stands up. He takes off his hat to greet her, which she finds charming, in an old-fashioned way.

"Ms Reese," he says. "I hope you find this meeting place suitably exposed." Jess thinks that if they knew each other better, he would have twitched the corner of his mouth at his own joke. 

She makes a point of taking in the noisy fountain, the steady flow of tourists through the underpass that echoes with their footsteps and chatter. "It is exposed but there's no chance we'll be overheard. Speaking of which, I will need you to disable the phone." The formal turn of speech is a deliberate tactic, the better to win him over. The better to eke intel from him as willingly as possible. It's strange to feel all those skills activating again inside her. She thought she'd put them away for good.

Harold takes out his phone, then holds it, hesitant. "It's not that I distrust you," he says.

"You should," says Jess. "I don't trust you either."

Harold nods. "I understand. I've hardly been forthcoming. Unfortunately, I have another operation underway, and someone's safety depends on me being able to monitor them at all times."

"Okay," Jess says. "That's fine – putting people's safety first is perfectly acceptable. You've got my number. Call me, and we can try this again."

It's a risk, calling his bluff, but Jess can almost smell how much Harold wants to talk to her. She wouldn't call him desperate, but there is a certain timbre to the way he talks about this other person's safety, a frustration, maybe, that he had to spend time coming all the way out here to meet her. Jess is important to him, but how important? She sees him waver, sees him assess her, trying to tell if she really would just walk away when he's dangled all these enticing carrots for her to investigate. She smiles, gives him a little nod, then walks away.

"Ms Reese!" he calls out to her. "All right, I agree." Three more steps, Jess thinks, and she's right. "Please!" he says, and there's that desperation.

She clamps down on elation before she turns to face him again. He has a crease between his brows, but he holds out his phone for her. Jess sits beside him and takes the phone. It's an IFT handset, which makes sense for someone this paranoid about anonymity. IFT phones are the most difficult to hack, and it means that Jess can't try any slight of hand to insert something into it. She slips a paperclip from the hem of her jacket and pops out the sim, then lays both carefully on the bench between them. 

"There," she says. "Now we can talk about John, and you can get back to whatever it is you were doing this morning when people were shooting at you."

"I suppose lunch is out of the question, given the level of distrust we've established." Harold moves the paper bag to the ground in front of them, then folds his hands in his lap. "I'd like to offer you a job, Ms Reese."

"What makes you think I'm in the market?" This is not the direction Jess is expecting. 

He turns slightly to look at her. "I'm led to believe you're currently out of work. People of extreme abilities do not handle idleness well, on the whole. It leaves too much time for dwelling on the past." Harold sighs and flicks at invisible dust on his sleeve. "I assure you, Ms Reese, that dwelling is rarely a healthy occupation." 

"I'm not here to discuss work, or my mental health, Harold." Jess doesn't understand how this has become a job interview, when she came here to extract intel from him. 

Harold nods understanding. "Well, then. To understand my involvement with John, you need an overview of my operation."

"Go ahead," Jess says. 

"I have a list." He explains it to Jess, in language she knows he is simplifying for her benefit, and what he says is unbelievable. He has access to intelligence, some kind of predictive intel that for some reason, informs him of an impending violent crime.

"Why do you care about it?" Jess asks. Harold has to give her more than this fairytale. 

"I care because someone has to," Harold says, simply. 

"All right," she says, after a family has passed them by. "I presume that John is on your list, which means that John is going to be either the victim of a violent crime, or the perpetrator. Do I have the basics down?"

"You seem remarkably sanguine about the fact that John may be in danger." For the first time in this conversation, Jess gets that prickle on the back of her neck that tells her he's lying. Lying, or at least dissembling in some way.

She sits back against the bench, crosses her legs and rests her hands on her knee, as relaxed and at ease as any park goer. 

"Well, neither option is particularly worrying," she says. "John was an extremely capable soldier. One of the best I've ever seen. And if he's about to commit a violent crime, well. I know him. If he's considering violence, there's going to be a good reason."

Harold opens his mouth to protest, and Jess holds up her hand to forestall his argument. "I'll help him, of course I will. It's just that it seems to me that you're manufacturing a certain amount of drama about it." 

"This isn't the first time John has been on my list," Harold says. The words tumble out unexpectedly, like startled prison escapees. "I believe he's routinely in danger, and I have no idea how to help him escape it."

Jess frowns. "Routinely in what kind of danger?"

"Well," Harold says, and shifts on the bench. His hand reaches for the twisted paper handle of the take-out bag, rolls it between his fingertips.

Years of experience interrogating the unwilling tells Jess that he doesn't want to give this information up, and that he'll need a little encouragement. She considers him, takes in his posture, and decides to go with sincerity as a mode.

"Harold," she says, leaning forward to give her words an earnest emphasis. "You know what I do – did – for a living. You can't worry that what you're going to say will hurt or shock me."

The look he gives her is wary, and tells her that yes, he does know exactly what she did for the agency, and that's part of why he's worried.

It's harder, of course, to be sincerely sincere. And as Kara used to say, you only get to play that card once, so save it for when it really counts. If not now, when Jess is done with her career, and the only thing that matters is John's happiness, then when?

Finally, she says the thing that would convince her, if their roles were reversed. "You don't have to trust me to know that I want John to be safe. Doubt my methods, but don't doubt my motivation. John is one of the few things in this world that matter to me."

She feels the impact of her words, in the way his posture snaps upright, and for a moment, she sees in his face that he cares, much more than he would like anyone to know. Then his expression closes, becomes opaque again.

"In my observation," he says, "I find that when an individual's number appears again and again, they are usually living in an abusive situation."

The emotional recoil hits before Jess has finished processing the words. Abuse? _John?_ No. She doesn't realise until she's standing in the shaded, echoing underpass that she even left the bench seat.

It doesn't make sense. Not just the question of why John would be with someone like that, but how? John is easily a head taller than his husband. Peter doesn't have military training, is not even in the same solar system compared to someone like John. Even Jess, with years of experience as a covert agent, would be hard-pressed to take someone John's size down. 

It's muggy under the terrace, and the stream of people passing through make it feel too small, claustrophobic. Jess finds her way to the edge of the pedestrian river, and stares at the tiled roof, waiting for her panic to settle. In the field it's important to analyse your reaction, understand it and get it out of the way before it gets you killed. This, though, is a blindside attack and it takes an age to figure out why she's terrified.

In the dark, she realises that she could do it. She could hurt John in all sorts of ways, physical or otherwise, and she could convince him to stay. Convince him it was his fault. She's done it for a living, done it for her country. Kara would be better at it, but Kara had a knack for manipulation. 

"There's people who care, and people who don't," she'd say. "If you don't care, you've got an advantage when it comes to hurting people. If you do, all I can say is that I hope you like a challenge." 

Jess does like a challenge. It's why she's alive today. Working with Kara taught her a lot about convincing people to let her hurt them. 

The ceiling tiles go blurry, and Jess scrubs at her face, angry and disappointed in herself. Of course John would walk over fire for the person who loved him. If Peter managed him carefully into a situation where it was acceptable for Peter to hurt him...

If it's true, she's going to have to kill Peter. There's no endgame where someone who can do that to another person just gives up and walks away. Jess never has.


	4. Chapter 4

Jess doesn't know how long she stands in the dark of the terrace, but when she emerges blinking into the afternoon sun, it feels like a different day. She has purpose. It's quite unexpected. Even more so that her purpose is her own.

Her purpose is to protect John. 

On the park bench, Harold has unwrapped a sandwich. He has a white cloth square spread over his lap to catch the crumbs, and there are five or six pigeons eyeing him hungrily. His phone, reassembled, sits beside him on the bench. His hand hovers over it, ready to disable it again on request, but Jess shakes her head. The pigeons fly away at her approach, but settle quickly, renewing their steady advance on Harold's position.

"You've eaten here before," Jess says, and sits down next to him, peers into the bag to see if there's a sandwich for her. There are plenty, so she takes one, and a sealed bottle of juice that is making the paper sack flimsy with condensation.

Harold doesn't comment on the fact that her makeup is smeared or that she's been standing in the dark for some length of time. They sit quietly for a while. Harold takes another bite of his sandwich, and chews meditatively as the pigeons draw ever closer.

"I shouldn't have started feeding them," he says, eventually, gesturing with his finger in the direction of the looming birds. "It was a bad precedent. They'll never stop upping the ante."

Jess turns her wrapped sandwich over and over in her hand, considering it, then unwraps one corner to examine the contents. She's curious to know what he's divined about her preferences on sandwiches. It's a BLT. That's a lazy gamble on Harold's part, she thinks, and takes a bite. Who doesn't love a BLT?

She chews and swallows, takes another bite. The tomato has a lot of flavour. The mayo is house made. It's amazing. She's been living on low-end takeout for too long; she probably has scurvy. 

They eat in silence, and nobody comes to kill Jess. After a few mouthfuls, she cracks the seal on the juice and raises it in a mock toast. 

"If the provisions are always this good, we might be able to make a deal, Harold." 

Harold lifts his sandwich in a mutual salute. "I'll do my best to keep the sandwiches coming, Ms Reese."

He sends her away with the rest of the sandwiches, and she eats them for dinner, cross-legged on her motel bed. She thinks about John, about his picture-perfect Victorian house which, according to Harold, is hiding ugliness. 

That night she dreams about long, empty halls which are sometimes John's house, and sometimes the buildings in Ordos. When she wakes, it's to the shrill, unfamiliar tone of her burner. Harold is calling her just after dawn. 

Jess puts the phone to her ear while she's still in bed. "Chickening out already, Harold?" she asks. Her voice is husky with sleep, which is a surprise but even a short course of antibiotics augmented with stolen vet medication has helped her recover a little.

"I'm very sorry, Ms Reese, but I have a favour to ask." Harold sounds out of breath, and Jess can hear from his uneven steps that he's moving very quickly.

"You in trouble, Harold?" She sits up and pushes her hair out of her eyes, then puts a hand on the weapon she keeps beside her bed, just in case.

Harold is silent for a few seconds, but Jess hears his footsteps going down stairs at a pace that can't be comfortable for a man who limps like he does. "I am managing," he says, eventually. "My troubles, however, are unrelated to this call. I've been monitoring John's phone usage over the past forty-eight hours, especially some conversations with former associates that would indicate he's arranging something illegal. And now he's left his home at an uncharacteristically early time."

Jess is already stepping into pants and reaching for a clean shirt. "He might be going for a run, Harold. He's certainly been keeping himself in shape." She's teasing again. Harold obviously knows her well enough to dangle in front of her the chance to spy on John, and it rankles that she's been so obvious.

Harold takes a breath to answer her, but his sentence is cut off by the sound of three shots. Jess's gun is in her hand instinctively, even though Harold is presumably in the city. Semi-automatic fire. Handgun. 

"Are you hit?" The words snap out while she's pushing her feet into her boots. "Harold! Talk to me, are you hit?" 

There's a long pause before Harold speaks again, almost a full minute, during which time Jess makes it to her stolen car, bag over one shoulder, gun securely holstered.

"I'm fine," Harold whispers down the line. "I'm uninjured. Please, Ms Reese, go and make sure John doesn't do anything foolish." Jess's phone pings, and a quick glance tells her John's location. Despite apparently being under fire, Harold has still sent her a suggested route to the downtown area of New Rochelle.

Jess starts the car and pulls out of the motel parking lot. It's a good five minutes before she's decided whether she's going after John, or to the city to help Harold, but in the end, it makes no sense to spend the better part of an hour heading into New York. Harold will be fine or he won't. Jess turns the car towards the centre of New Rochelle, where presumably John is doing something stupid. 

The co-ordinates lead her to an empty auto shop on Lincoln Avenue, tucked in behind a mosque and a recycling depot. The shop itself is empty, with a faded For Lease sign plastered over half the window. The roll-up door at the back is open, and Jess can see right through the building from the street, where the bed of John's truck in the yard is visible. She parks a street back, and walks to the location, head down over her phone, just another office worker on a coffee run. There's a distant roar from the highway, the last of morning peak hour filtering through, but out here the traffic is light. 

Jess turns down the alley that passes behind the auto shop, still walking with purpose though she softens the impact of her feet on the sidewalk, deadens the sound of her shoes against the concrete. There's a metal fence around the property, buckled and bent with time. Jess stops before she gets to the opening, and uses the gap between two misaligned pieces of iron to scope out the yard.

She sees a Kawasaki bike leaning on its kickstand, with a red and white helmet on the seat. John is talking to the rider, an Indian man in leathers matching the helmet. The tenor of the conversation, Jess thinks, is one of two strangers with a friend in common. She's hearing a soldier's exchange of identifying criteria: number of tours, units, locations. They've both served in Afghanistan. John hones in on Tikrit, the area he's most familiar with, and they quickly find points of familiarity there, from the food, to the particular form of traveller's diarrhoea that you get on that first desert tour. The two of them relax a little, but just a little.

John's shoulders are still high and he's jumpy, scanning the yard for threats. Jess has to step back a couple of times so he doesn't catch sight of her through the tiny slit in the metal fence. When the bike rider pops open a pannier, Jess sees John's hand twitch for the rifle that hung on his shoulder for so long. His movement triggers her own reflex, and she draws her handgun. Whatever is happening, it's enough to set John on edge, which means Jess needs to be ready to keep him safe.

The man passes John a wooden box, removing the lid as he passes it over. John reaches for the contents of the box, and Jess realises, as he takes the gun, that he's wearing leather gloves.

"Smart," Jess says to him, silently. "No prints." She watches him check the gun over, pull the slide and check the chamber, all with as much confidence and professionalism as she would expect from a former Ranger. She's surprised that he has to buy a clean piece; surely he's got some already tucked away?

The weapon is evidently acceptable, because John nods, tucks it into his waistband, and pulls an envelope from his front pocket. The bike rider checks the contents, nods and offers a hand to John. They shake, and then John is reaching for the metal gate to pull it aside. Jess withdraws, disappears back up the alley before the motorcycle engine kicks over.

Her hands are itching for gear she no longer owns. If this was her op, she'd want a tracker to put on the Kawasaki, but as it stands she can only memorise the plate number. Harold is presumably resourceful in this department. Hopefully he can get a name, and from that, Jess should be able to figure out which service he came from.

Harold. Jess steps inside the only open store on this street, a tattoo parlour, and dials Harold's number. Hopefully he's either gotten himself safe, or he's smart enough to have left his phone on silent.

John's truck zooms past the tattoo parlour. Jess can see he's still tense, still checking front and back as he drives.

"Ms Reese." Harold's voice is calm, and at normal volume. "How is Mr Arndt?"

Jess leans out of the tattoo parlour, and sees John's truck turn left towards home. "He's fine. He's headed back home with a nearly-new piece tucked into his pants." What is John thinking? Harold is right, this is out of character. Unless John has changed more than Jess can imagine in the time since they broke up.

Harold sounds worried and puzzled. "What does a nurse need with a gun?"

"A better question is why does an ex-soldier need to buy an unregistered weapon on the downlow? If he doesn't have a few already stashed at home, I'd be very surprised." Jess walks back to her stolen car, sits behind the wheel and thinks.

A few hours later and back in the city, Jess gets a text with directions to a diner. Harold is almost done with his lunch when she arrives. She sits at his table, gestures at the waitress for coffee, and watches him finish his soup. Apart from meeting her eyes with a smile, Harold never lifts his gaze from his phone. 

Jess cranes her head a little; he's watching a red dot move over a map of Manhattan. 

"Is John in the city?" she asks. The little red dot becomes stationary somewhere in the campus of City College. "Is he taking a class?" 

Harold is apparently satisfied with the progress of his subject, and finally gives his full attention to the last of his soup. 

"This is an unrelated matter," he says. "Or, rather, it's related in that it's part of what I do to help people. As you can tell from this morning's situation, I'm a little overloaded at the moment." He puts his spoon down and dabs his mouth. "Part of the reason I'd need someone like you, Ms Reese, is that I'm not exactly suited to running while under fire." 

Jess is intrigued. "Then I think it's time I saw how it all works." 

They walk together to his base of operations. In a covered walkway that apparently goes nowhere, he explains the way he works.

"I don't know, as I said, whether the person on my list is the victim or the perpetrator. All I know is that there will be violence, and this person will be central to it. And it must be premeditated or extremely predictable. I've learned quite a lot about intimate partner violence since I took up this work.There is an acutely repetitive nature to it." Harold unlocks and leans on a heavy door that swings open. 

In the beam of light that angles into the darkness, Jess sees dust motes dancing over piles of books. Harold holds the door open for her, and she steps into the abandoned library, senses prickling.

"What happened here?" The floor is strewn with open books and empty shelves sit in disarray. Dust is thick on all the surfaces.

Harold seems inordinately proud of this chaos. "I like to think of it as the decay of western civilisation," he says. "The city closed a lot of libraries in the early nineties. I bought them but never managed to put them into use. Now I'm grateful this place has been left in limbo."

Jess follows him up the stairs, and sees John's face on a cracked glass screen. It's from his hospital ID, so he's in pale green scrubs. His smile is the half-crooked quirk he uses when he's surprised to be so happy. Jess brushes the image with one finger. She knows he's worked there for three years. She hopes that there were a lot of good days before things went bad, but after what Harold told her, she can't be sure.

"Peter Arndt is in a lot of debt, to some very dubious people," Harold says, showing her spreadsheets and banking records. Peter has hocked the house twice, once to high-risk lenders who don't ask the kind of questions that larger operations would. Harold thinks that John doesn't realise how perilous their living situation is.

"The second mortgage is signed by both parties, but if you'll look at this..." Harold flicks up the agreement. John's signature is patently forged. His left-handed, angular script is difficult to imitate. Jess remembers joking that his handwriting was more secure than a thumbprint. 

There's more. A police report, filed by a jogger, who heard a fight so loud he was certain that someone was being attacked, followed by a gunshot. A gunshot! Jess knows that it wasn't John who fired that gun, because the report says that a weapon was fired in error. John has trigger discipline in his core. When he fires a gun he does not miss. 

She had assumed he was driving his old truck out of prudence and nostalgia, but maybe it's because there aren't enough ready funds for two new vehicles. Peter's car is a sedan, newer but not new. Jess wonders how the conversation went when they bought that one and whether Peter had to manipulate the situation so that it was him that got the new car and not John. She wraps her arms around her waist reflexively and her abdominal wound sparks up in protest.

Harold notices, because Harold, apparently, notices everything. "You never did get to finish up those antibiotics," he says. "There's an excellent and discreet clinic here." He writes an address on a card in neat, small capitals. "Look after yourself, Ms Reese. 

Jess takes the card, but she's not ready to leave this bizarre library-cum-batcave just yet. "You were under fire this morning," she says. "Tell me about that."

Harold frowns at her.

"I'll go," she says, to soothe his ruffled feathers. "If you tell me all about it while I'm there." Clinics make her nervous at the best of times, and visiting an unknown clinic on the dime of a mysterious rich man is going to be extra unsettling. She'll do better with something to focus her attention on.

Harold's money really is good, she decides, sitting in a wide leather armchair with a downy-soft lavender blanket over her knees. An IV hangs on a stand just out of view. A smiling attendant serves her tea from a teapot into a china cup, and she sips expensive orange pekoe as she reads files on a tablet that Harold gave her. At no point does anyone mention that her wound is obviously a gunshot, or that they are required to notify the police.

"John is not the only person I'm trying to protect," Harold said into her ear. (The earpiece, also a gift from Harold, is sleeker and smaller than anything she's worked with before.) "As I said, there's a list, and sometimes that list grows more rapidly than I'm able to handle."

The unspoken word here is "Alone." Whatever it is that Harold actually does, he's desperate for help. Jess can see a pitch when it's thrown her way. She and Kara worked the other side of this con for their country. John being in trouble at this particular time, when she's vulnerable and purposeless, would be an easy scenario for a rich man to cook up.

Still, she thinks, looking down at the sweet heart-shaped face of a law student who chose escort work to keep college debt at bay, it's difficult to see where Harold benefits by tricking Jess into helping. Jamie Paterson is nobody important, except to her family. She's undeniably in trouble, but again, that's small fry to someone as rich as Harold. There's no perceivable benefit for a man like him.

"Why are you helping her?" she asks, after an attendant has come by to check on her. "I don't understand what's in it for you."

In her ear, Harold's voice is very patient. "I help her, Ms Reese, because someone should. And I have the resources."

Jess stares at the girl's photo from the escort site, takes in the plunging neckline and the hesitant smile. "What did she do to put herself in danger? Besides this, I mean."

"The agency she works for became entangled in a blackmail scheme. She refused to take part, and in fact, indicated that she would reveal details to the police."

_You poor naïve little kid_ , Jess thinks. _Did you realise what your moment of defiance would cost you?_ "All right," she says to Harold. "Let's get this kid safe."

She has no idea what's going to happen next.


	5. Chapter 5

Her first number takes a day to resolve. Harold has Jamie's class schedule, and Jess tracks her from library to class, class to cafeteria. It's clear very quickly that she's not the only person following Jamie, and that she's much better at remaining covert. Jamie's other tail is a narrow-faced, lean man in a leather jacket. Jess brushes past him on a crowded stairwell, and comes away with his wallet, which holds a police badge.

"His name is Azzarello," she tells Harold in the cafeteria bathroom. "Detective Azzarello, in fact. Is there some kind of sting operation going on here…" She sighs. "Don't make me use Tanager in the field. I don't expect your real name. Just something short." 

"Finch will suffice." She can hear a smile in Harold's voice when he speaks. It's frustratingly pleasant to feel that comfortable back and forth that comes with a good rapport and a clever partner. Damn it, she thinks, leaning against the tiled wall. 

"Detective Azzarello is assigned to a narcotics unit at the Fifty-First Precinct," Harold – Finch – says. "None of the cases currently assigned to him seem to be related to Ms Paterson's situation. Although…" There's a brief pause, which Jess is already beginning to associate with the soft clatter of keys. "His phone has been to the Imperial Talents Escort Agency eleven times, which seems excessive, given his bank balance."

Jess can just imagine what Azzarello does on eleven visits to an escort agency. She's good at making quick and accurate assessments. Azzarello is a dirty cop, but he's a small fish. All she needs to do now is follow him all the way up the river to where the big fish lurk. Then she can make things safe for Jamie Paterson.

Jamie is frugal. She walks everywhere she possibly can, and she buys food that actually needs cooking. This is why she's carrying a bag of groceries back to her apartment at eleven o'clock at night.

Jess sees the set-up once they turn into Jamie's street. Ahead, there's a white van idling in a pool of darkness, where a streetlight has been shot out. Jess loosens the gun in her holster and quickens her pace, keeping to the shadows as much as possible.

"Get ready, Finch," she says, as Jamie moves into the circle of darkness beside the van.

"Be careful, Ms Reese." Harold's voice is tense in her ear. "We haven't had much time to discuss operations but I prefer that violence be kept to a…" 

Then Jess hears the rattle of the van door, and she's moving.

She's in the fray before any of them realise there's another person here. One shot goes into Azzarello's foot, and he collapses. A grizzled man with a boxer's body and a face like a hatchet erupts from the side of the van, gun drawn and face enraged. Jess catches his gun hand and drags him down to the curb where she snaps his forearm with her foot. Azzarello is crawling for cover behind the van so Jess puts another bullet into him, this time a shoulder. Jamie is screaming, and Harold's voice is one long string of protest about lethal force. 

There's one more active target to secure, and that's the man behind the wheel. He's clever, this one, and has his phone up to snap a shot of her. Jess tilts her head to assess the angle, takes a step to the left and raises her gun. The driver's face goes pasty in panic, then Jess shoots the phone right out of his hand. The bullet slams into the headrest just by his ear. The guy's mouth makes a perfect O. It's very satisfying.

Things slam back into regular time, and Jess feels the wound in her belly screech in complaint. The air is filled with male voices in pain, and the ground is covered in groceries and blood. Jamie has stopped screaming now. So has Harold, though Jess would call his utterance more of a panicked babble.

"Ms Paterson is calling 911," Harold says. "I would rather she didn't."

"Please stop," says Jess to her, her gun still trained on the driver. In her peripheral vision, she sees Jamie go still. "There's not much point in calling the police anyway, since they're already here." She toes Azzarello's limp form by way of emphasis.

"Who are you?" Jamie whispers.

Jess holsters her weapon and takes Jamie's arm. "I think I'm the good guy," she says, and leads her to safety.

Harold's safe house is very comfortable. Jess sits on the sofa with Jamie, lets Jamie cry onto her shoulder. Harold, faintly horrified by the emotional outburst, explains that he has taken care of her debt, and arranged a place for her at a law school out of state. 

"It still seems strangely effortful to protect one person," Jess says, when Jamie has been whisked off to the airport to start her new life.

Harold thinks about that for a while. "I try not to put a value of any kind on a human life," he says. 

That makes Jess laugh, a bitter bark of a thing. "That is something only a very rich man can say." Then she shrugs, thinking of the many lives she has been ordered to end. "Then again, I guess those are usually the people who treat lives like casino chips. Kudos on your humanity, Mr Finch." She doesn't want to let Harold see how rattled she is. Saving someone who has no strategic value, saving someone just because they were helpless? Euphoric.

Jess stays in the safehouse precisely ten minutes after Harold departs. The best way to evade someone as nosy as him is to relocate while he's on the move. She steals a car, steals a phone, and heads to New Rochelle.

John and Peter live in a restored Victorian house on the waterfront. It's an affluent area, and even this late at night, the street is wide, well-lit and clean. Jess parks her stolen car some distance away and picks her way through hedges and over manicured lawns.

The Arndt house is pristine, painted dove grey with white trim, nestled on a perfect lawn. It reminds Jess of vintage Christmas postcards. When she stands still, she hears seabirds and gentle waves.

Inside, they're having a late dinner, which will be John's breakfast before he starts work at eleven. The dining room is lined with French doors that open out onto a paved terrace overlooking the water. Probably very charming in summer, Jess thinks, walking silently across the stones. She imagines John, settled into a lawn chair, beer bottle in hand. It's a pleasant thought. Jess' brain is still in overdrive from having saved Jamie Paterson.

The expensive drapes don't meet completely in the middle, so she hangs back until she's scoped out what each person can see through that narrow space. John is habitually alert, and will catch movement in the darkness. 

John's an alert guy and it wouldn't take much for him to catch movement out in the darkness. Jess is disturbed at how much she wants to be caught right now. It's easy to lie to herself about how he'd help her sort these conflicting emotions: jubilation and guilt and pride and shame.

To Jess's surprise, John sits with his back to the French doors. It makes her shoulder blades itch. Even before, in the army, she wouldn't have felt safe with all that space behind her and nothing but a few panels of glass to stop a bullet. But there John sits, and the angle of his head, the span of his shoulders are so familiar it hurts. 

Peter sits opposite John, facing the glass doors. Jess doesn't know Peter well, but she doubts he's ever been battle ready. He's not going to spy her in the darkness. 

There's a frosty atmosphere over dinner. One by one, all of Harold's evidence falls into place.

Peter and John eat in silence. The only sound is the tick of cutlery against the plates. The tension is thick. It reminds Jess of awkward family dinners, where the slightest wrong move could trigger an avalanche. It seems wrong for John to be this upright, stilted person, chewing steak in silence at a table too large for only two people. He should be laughing with his husband while they eat, they should be sharing a beer, not some mid-range merlot in riesling glasses.

Alongside the mission let-down, Jess feels vaguely dirty, watching them in the middle of some argument, some private battle between two people who should be friends.

A waterbird screams into the night, and both men jump at the sudden noise. John looks over his shoulder and Jess freezes. She's looking right at John. If his eyes shift focus to near range, he'll see her, unless she stays perfectly still. If there's no movement to catch his attention, he'll keep looking towards the water. Jess holds her breath, imagines herself part of the house, just a shadow cast by branches and walls. All she has to do is stand still, unblinking, until John turns away.

His eyes are the same: blue-green, with those long sooty lashes that she used to tease him about, and a wary expression. Jess can't breathe. It's been ten years and he's still John, he's still the man she loved and left behind.

John turns back to his meal, and Jess sees him glance at Peter.

"I think we're safe for now," he says. There's an apology in his voice, the offer of an olive branch.

Peter watches him a moment longer than Jess is comfortable with, but then he smiles, and reaches for John's hand to touch it gently.

Jess backs away from the house, takes her chance to quietly escape. She has no right to yearn for John's understanding. She has no right to set foot here. 

She drives aimlessly for a while, in and around New Rochelle, stinging with shame and guilt, and yet cruising past places John might go. Is this where he buys groceries? Do he and Peter go to this cineplex on date night? 

It's a relief when the stolen phone on the seat beside her rings. She doesn't have to check the display to know who is calling.

"Took you a while to track me down," she says to Harold. Sass is a good cover for uncertainty. Jess hopes he doesn't ask what she was doing. Or why. She doesn't have answers for either of those questions right now.

Harold's voice is distant over the car speakers. "I call when I need you, Ms Reese. I've received another number."

"Already?" Jess says, as if she doesn't give a damn, as if this is all a mild inconvenience to her. As if she wasn't grinning like a loon in anticipation and relief.

"The numbers never stop coming," Harold says. "You should know that now, at the start."

Jess doesn't even try to pretend she hasn't taken the job. Right now, she thinks, it's the only thing keeping her sane.

"Then we'd better get to work, Mr Finch."


	6. Chapter 6

If Harold is angry about her little side trip, he doesn't mention it once. By the time Jess makes it back to the library, he's got the new number printed out and taped onto the glass. Jess sees John's file still on his desk, though. Apparently Harold keeps that one close to hand.

Days roll past, and soon Jess is wearing clothes that Harold bought, carrying tech that Harold put together in his workshop next to the nook where they make tea and coffee. Last night she slept in the safe house, empty now that Jamie Paterson is settling into her new dorm. It's a blandly anonymous place with excellent water pressure. There's few traces of Jamie left: a toothbrush that Jess takes for her cleaning kit, some clothes that come back from the laundry service, a bottle of vitamins that had rolled under the bed.

Under Harold's guidance over the next few weeks, Jess strings a predatory building super up by his ankles until he promises to quit his job. Harold buys the building, and installs the grandmother of their three numbers in the super's place. Jess adds this to her mental dossier on Harold's financial resources. 

Jess only returns to New Rochelle once, back to the motel for the rest of her stuff. She doesn't do anymore prowling, but she does drive past the impeccable Victorian before she heads back to the city.

That day is a Sunday, bright and clear, haunted faintly by the sound of motorboats and children playing. At John's house, the lawn is freshly cut and there's a ladder leaning up against the siding.

As Jess drives past, John walks over the roof, wearing jeans and an old t-shirt, muddy to the elbows. Jess is careful not to catch his eye, to drive at a consistent pace. In the mirror she watches him kneel down on the roof tile and scoop leaves out of the gutters, and she thinks about what it means that Harold got his number. She wonders whether he's the victim or the perpetrator. If he's the perpetrator, if John is planning to kill his husband, should she even intervene? 

Two days later, she dresses as a day-care teacher and catches a mother in the act of poisoning her child. She puts on a business suit and stops a man from shooting up his office.

Nine days after they saved Jamie Paterson, her father comes roaring into Manhattan for revenge. 

The first Jess hears about it is a call from Jamie in the middle of the night. "He's so angry! I shouldn't have told him, but he knew something was wrong." Jamie is panicked, crying, gasping for breath on her end of the line. 

"It's okay," Jess says, as an incoming call beeps softly in her ear. "Don't worry. I'll keep him safe, I promise." She'll wish she hadn't promised, in a few hours, but right now she's riding high on success.

The incoming call is Harold, telling her they have a new number. 

Tim Paterson is ex-Navy. He's heavy-set, but looks strong, and he walks like he's not afraid of anything. A brush pass on the subway tells Jess he's not carrying a gun, but his hands are the size of dinner plates, and that he's solidly muscled under that layer of fat. 

"He's worked up enough to kill someone, and I doubt he needs a gun to do that," Jess says.

When it becomes clear that Tim Paterson intends to confront Azzarello inside the precinct, Jess gets ahead of him to attempt an intervention.

"It won't help Jamie if they fill you full of holes in there," she says from a doorway as he storms past.

Paterson stops to glare at her, a strafing gaze up and down her body that is brusque and non-sexual. "You helped her." It's a statement, flat and assessing. Jess realises he's as much in mission mode as she is. "Where'd you serve?"

This was as good a way to make a connection as any. It had worked for John in the abandoned auto shop, and it would work for her, here. "Tora Bora," she said. "I know you were in the Gulf."

"You know a lot," Paterson says. "Tora Bora was ten years ago. What have you been doing since then?"

He already knows. There's an expression soldiers get when they cross paths with the CIA, a wary distaste. Jess knows it well. When she doesn't answer, he lets out a bitter snort.

"You stay away from my daughter," he says. He doesn't raise his voice, but Jess sees a cop outside the precinct glance in their direction. The tension between the two of them is obvious. Jess does not need police attention right now.

She shrugs and steps back into the shadowed doorway. 

When Paterson is out of earshot, her earpiece pipes up. "You can't let him walk in there," Harold says.

"He wasn't going to go quietly, Finch." Jess says. "Noise attracts attention, and rumour has it you're a very private person." She winces and softens the tone of her voice. There's no need to pass that bitterness along. "Don't worry, I got a tracker onto him. We'll know where he is every second of the day."

Knowing where Tim Paterson is every second of the day is cold comfort. Jess catches up with him in a Bronx warehouse. He's been stabbed, and the men who did it are still in the room. She can hear the breath whistling out of his chest. They're arguing while his lung collapses.

Jess crouches on a catwalk outside the second floor office. Below her are rows and rows of industrial refrigerators and she can hear the slap of waves from far away. The options for body disposal here are plentiful.

"How do you plan to proceed?" Harold's voice is calm, but Jess can hear the panic gathering.

"I'm going to go in there and get Jamie's dad." Jess takes a calm, steadying breath. "There's four of them, including Paterson. I heard Azzarello; don't know the others.. Harold, Paterson's going to need a hospital."

There's a brief pause and a rattle of keys. "I'm working on it," says Harold.

Inside, Azzarello is obviously nervous. He's still on crutches after his last fight with Jess, and he keeps crashing into the furniture.

"Sit the fuck down!" a gravelly voice barks. Jess hears the squeak of an office chair and pictures Azzarello sitting down, propping his crutches against his leg.

Jess dubs the second man Common Sense, since he's the only one who thinks it was a bad idea to stab Paterson. "What the hell are you thinking? This is crazy! You can't just throw everyone you disagree with into the fucking harbour."

Gravelly Voice says, "We wouldn't have this problem if you'd put two in the back of the girl's head, now, would we?"

From the floor, there's a scuffle of movement, then the undeniable sound of a boot in someone's stomach. Tim Paterson's bubbling breath becomes a groan.

"Look at that. He's still trying to kill me. Guess we can see where his little girl got her stamina." 

Azzarello laughs. "Lucky she got the rack from her mom, am I right?" His voice whines, desperate for approval. 

"Yeah, I think we can say we all got lucky there." Gravelly Voice is leering, Jess can tell. 

She leans forward, slides the safety off as quietly as she can.

"Ms Reese," Harold says, softly. "I know they are monstrous. Please try not to kill them."

Inside, the men are arguing about whose fuck-up led to Jamie Paterson escaping.

"Fusco, I swear to God, I will shove that gun up your fat ass if you don't stop your whining!" Gravelly Voice is starting to get stupid with anger.

"I'm going," says Jess. "I'll do my best to keep things conversational."

She elbows through the plywood door. It comes off the hinges and slams down on one of the men with a satisfying thud.

In her ear, she can hear Harold's voice, high-pitched with anxiety. He tells her something about Fusco, but she's moving too fast to take that in now. She strikes upwards with the flat of a palm and breaks a man's nose. His face is familiar, and she ponders that as she wheels on Azzarello, fumbling for his own gun. Jess catches his plaster cast and uses it to flip him to the ground.

"…they're all detectives…" Harold is saying, just as Jess hears a hammer pull back. There's a cold circle pressing into the nape of her neck, the familiar shape of a muzzle.

"Don't move," says Fusco, the last one left. 

Jess finally puts it all together: these are the men from the night she rescued Jamie, which means this is the one with the curly hair and cherubic face. The one who was smart enough to get his phone up and photograph her before she shot the phone.

Jess laughs, and spins quickly so the gun is pressed into her forehead.

"What's going on?" says Harold. "Is Mr Paterson safe?"

Common Sense, or, what was it they called him? Fusco, that was it. He's surprised. And slightly horrified. He swallows, though to his credit he doesn't drop the gun.

"That's right," Jess says. "It's a whole other game when you have to look me in the eye." 

One of the benefits of being female in this business is that for the morally undecided, it's a shock to have a woman at their mercy. Jess has disarmed many a man with his hand on his fly.

In her ear, she hears Harold breathe, quick and shallow, but he manages not to speak. He's learning how to deal with crises.

"It's Fusco, isn't it?" Jess keeps her tone reasonable, as if they weren't talking with a loaded gun against her skin. "And you're a detective. Like Azzarello, here. That's interesting to me."

"Why's that?" says Fusco. "Why're you on our tails like this?"

"Fucking shoot her!" That's Azzarello, wheezing from the floor. Their boss, the man with the hatchet face, is unconscious with blood streaming in a bright red river from his nose and mouth.

Jess grins at Fusco, and she sees that he's terrified but bracing to fire. _I know you,_ she thinks. _Your problem is you're too loyal to say no to these idiots but too smart to be on board with what they do._

She jerks her head aside and grabs the gun, pulling herself close to Fusco with her hand wrapped around his, and her finger pressing his down on the trigger. Together, they point the gun at Azzarello. 

"When you've got a bead on someone, you don't hesitate," she says to Fusco. "You want to be a killer, you have to get over that problem."

Azzarello holds very still. Fusco breathes heavily, and his trigger finger goes rigid under hers, not that it will prevent her from firing.

Jess waits until she feels Fusco's arm relax. She takes the gun and points it at Fusco, then tips her head in the direction of their number.

"Give me a hand with him," she says. "There's an ambulance on the way."

"They're less than five minutes away," says Harold, and finally the typing starts again. "And thank you, Ms Reese."

Jess can't answer him, not without giving away that she has an open line here, but she can't think what she's done to deserve thanks.

On the ground, Fusco is waffling again, his hands hovering above the unconscious Mr Paterson.

"Weren't we just talking about hesitation, Fusco?" Jess looms over him. 

Fusco tentatively puts his fingers to the guy's throat. 

"He's alive, but Stiles gutted him," Fusco says. He holds up his other hand, and the palm shines glossy red. "If you want him to live, we probably should leave him for the paramedics."

Jess thinks of the noise Paterson made when the one with the raspy voice – Stiles – put his boot into the man's belly, and the most appropriate action she can think of is to put a bullet in Stiles' head. 

She takes aim at the unconscious man on the floor, but before she can pull the trigger, there's movement in her peripheral vision. As she wheels, she catches a glimpse of Fusco's horrified face. Then she sees Azzarello fumbling for a weapon. Jess kicks it out of his hands and it hits the wall with a metallic clunk. It's a can of mace. She pulls back the hammer on Fusco's Glock, ready to take her headshot. Azzarello looks up at her, his eyes wild, and she feels a familiar calm settle over her. 

"Don't," Fusco says from behind her, his voice unexpectedly soft. "Come on, he's down, can you let him live?"

Can she? Should she? These men are the kind that come back again and again, always catching at your hem like burrs.

"Ms Reese," Harold says, his voice calm now. "Please, Mr Paterson needs your help much more than he needs revenge. Are you able to render first aid?"

Jess makes her decision, and slams the butt of Fusco's gun down on Azzarello's temple to knock him out. Then she crouches over Paterson's slumped form. There's bloody foam oozing out of his mouth, and he's tinged blue around the lips. Fusco presses a handful of Paterson's shirt against the man's ribs, but there's blood soaking quickly into the fabric. Every breath is a bubbling whistle, from Patersons's throat and the hole in his side. 

Jess looks at the room full of unconscious and corrupt cops. "Let's get moving," she says, and Fusco sighs.

On the street, it's cold, but the ever-resourceful Fusco flags down a cab with a sharp whistle. He flashes his badge and requisitions the driver's first aid kit, extracts the space blanket and drapes it over Paterson. Paterson is thankfully still unconscious. Blue and red lights bounce off the warehouse walls, and suddenly the loading bay is bustling with people.

The hospital is bright and clean after the grime of the warehouse, and Fusco's ability to blend in and smooth details comes to the forefront. He flashes his badge at every opportunity, as they clunk the gurney into the ER. Jess has no doubt that he's going to smooth the way, both for their number and for his corrupt friends back at the warehouse. 

Suddenly it occurs to her that Finch would be much better off working with Fusco. He's corrupt, but he's competent and has a kind of decency about him. Honestly, he's probably a better person than her.

It starts to hit home as the adrenaline fades. Even a dirty cop has a better capacity for protection than her. Jamie asked her to keep her dad safe, and Jess failed. Ten years ago, she wouldn't have, but she's spent too long rebuilding herself into something different. This is not the kind of work for Jess, not anymore. 

She hovers at the ambulance bay, and watches the foot traffic stream past. It's tempting to just slip into it, vanish away from Finch and his weird world, but then what? She can't leave Tim Paterson alone in the hospital.

She taps her ear. "You still there, Finch?"

"Always, Ms Reese." Harold's voice is calm. Jess listens for signs of anger or disappointment, but there's nothing but steady breath and keyboard sounds.

"This isn't working for me," she says. Before he can cut in, she carries on. "I'm doing more harm than good here."

Harold is silent for a long time. "I disagree, but right now that's beside the point. They're taking Mr Paterson into surgery now. Detective Fusco has attempted to leave the hospital twice. I believe he would benefit from some back-up before his friends arrive."

Jess steps back inside the ER and snags herself a set of scrubs. "As soon as Paterson is safe, we're done," she says, and slips into the changing room.


	7. Chapter 7

Tim Paterson comes through surgery just fine, and is soon comfortably installed in a lavish but secure suite in a private hospital, safely outside the city. Harold says nothing about their discussion in the ambulance bay, but merely instructs her over the earpiece.

An hour after Paterson arrives, the security staff ushers Jamie into her father's suite. She's pale, with red-rimmed eyes and a bag of clothes on her shoulder. Jess meets her gaze, but with a cool and professional distance. Jamie seems too exhausted to remember asking Jess for help.

Once the lights have been dimmed for the faux-dark of a hospital room, Jess stands in the doorway of Paterson's room, watching Jamie sitting at her father's bedside. The flurry of nursing staff managing patient admissions has settled now, and even the beeps from the vitals monitor seem subdued. Jess goes to the near-silent atrium of the suite and stands in front of the camera she knows must be watching.

"I'm going now. You can hire private security for Paterson and his daughter, if you want. If I were you, I'd lean on Detective Fusco. He's vulnerable right now, he should be easy to turn."

There's no answer in her ear, but when the sliding door to the suite closes behind her, she hears electronic locks engage one after the other. 

Jess packs her bags in the apartment she's been staying at since working with Finch. She's used to clearing out of places quickly and with little trace, so she relaxes into the habit, and gets herself free.She gets a cab, and leaves her phone and earpiece under the back seat. It won't stop Finch from tracking her, but she's not going to make it easy.

The next time she has a thought that isn't focused on making sure she isn't being followed, she's in a parking structure attached to a mall. She doesn't have any plans, but she's more than halfway to New Rochelle already. 

Of course she's going back – where else would she go? It doesn't matter that this is predictable, and Finch will be able to find her. He probably chose that hospital with New Rochelle in mind, but she doesn't care about that anymore. 

When she turns onto Shore Road, she feels the muscles in her back finally relax. It feels good to be here. Not a healthy kind of good, but there's a self-indulgent sweetness to knowing she's going to see John again. It's the greedy anticipation of morphine kicking in, she realises. 

Unfortunately when she arrives, John's house is in darkness, or as much in darkness as you can get in an affluent suburb. The streetlights are bright and plentiful, and there are discrete points of soft yellow light up the length of John's driveway. John and Peter are clearly both out for the night, because all the windows are dark. Jess watches the empty house for a while, but that doesn't settle the itch between her shoulder blades the way it used to. She parks the car and takes to the sidewalk.

She's been on John's property before but she's never been inside. He's made his home secure, though. She avoids the motion-activated light on the front porch only to discover there's a flip-guard on the deadbolt that thwarts her bump key. The thoroughness of it makes her grin.

She doesn't find a vulnerability until she's on the third floor. One window lock is loose enough to jimmy open. Inside, she finds a crumpled pack of Marlboros and a yellow plastic lighter tucked behind the curtains. Someone has a secret habit. 

The air inside has the clean but dusty feel of a guest room, though there's a hint of stale tobacco in the drapes. The secret smoker iis not as stealthy as he'd like to think.

Then she's inside John's home, and it feels like Christmas morning.

The carpet is thick and new, still springy underfoot. They don't have many visitors, she guesses. Only Peter, sneaking upstairs for a smoke, has walked this hallway.

One floor down, with the master bedroom open in front of her, she can feel John's presence more closely. The tiny bedside gun safe is a giveaway. Jess doesn't have Harold's technological chops, but she knows a few tricks with fingerprint scanners. Inside is a neat little .22, well-oiled and maintained. It's also small enough that Peter could handle it. Jess wonders if they've been to the range together.

The bed is impeccably made with hospital corners and military precision – but there are soft impressions on the folded blanket across the base where John or Peter sat down to dress. There's a crumpled shirt in the laundry hamper and a mess of plastic in the little wastepaper basket. 

Someone is wearing a dinner jacket tonight, fresh from the drycleaners. Jess trails her fingertips over the blanket and moves to the bathroom, which has a claw-footed bath, big enough for two, and some candles in their own puddled wax on the windowsill. There's two toothbrushes, two sets of towels hung neatly on the heated rail. Two bottles of cologne, different brands, one mostly untouched and obviously a gift. 

John is easy to picture walking up and down these carpeted stairs, probably barefoot, maybe clad only in sweatpants, on one of those middle-of-the-night snack raids she remembers. He lived with her, between tours, and it was this casual ease with himself that Jess is aching for now.

The cool hardwood floors would feel slick underfoot. His footsteps would change from silent to a quiet tap-tap as he steps from carpet to wood. Jess has the strangest urge to take off her own shoes, as if walking the same path as John would bring him closer somehow.

She eyes the kitchen, but somehow that's more intimate than the bedroom. This is the place where they sit hunched over coffee on cold mornings, the place where they wash the dishes together or decide what take-out they're getting. It's too vulnerable for Jess to bear.

The basement, on the other hand, is familiar ground. It's as tidy as a barracks, with every tool secured on a pegboard, the laundry organised, and not a speck of dust anywhere. It's easy to identify this as John's space, and not just from the tidiness: there's an engine block that is being slowly refurbished, and of course there's the gun safe. The real one, not just the upstairs storage for a bedside weapon. It's huge, heavy and secure.

Jess spends a few minutes working on the combination lock for the safe. It's good quality, but she's had a lot of practice. There's a waft of gun oil as the heavy door swings open, and then there's the satisfying gleam of well-kept weaponry. John has a nice collection: handguns, rifles, a few extras like scopes and lights, and plenty of ammo lined up on the top shelf. The gun he bought in the machine shop is conspicuously absent. Jess runs her knuckle along the barrels of the rifles, then relocks the safe and heads back up the stairs.

John is waiting for her as she emerges through the door, handgun trained on her with a competent two-handed grip. He's safely distant enough that he'll get a couple of shots off before she can kick him, and his hands are steady.

"Hands where I can see them, Jess." His voice is calm, calmer than she would have expected, given the surprise of seeing her after all these years.

She smiles. 

She should be launching into practiced mind games right now, turning the situation to her advantage, getting control of the weapon.

"It's really good to see you," she says, and it's the truth.


	8. Chapter 8

John points with his chin towards the front door, which sits open. "Outside," he says. His voice is calm. It's a calm she recognises, it's a calm she's seen in the field. This is the calm that settles on you when your finger is about to slide to the trigger. 

Jess' heart beats fast as they walk single-file down the hall. She needs to de-escalate this situation, but It's hard to slip into professional mode, not when it's John. "I'm sorry," she says. "I shouldn't have just broken in like this." 

In the glass of a dresser door, Jess catches sight of their reflections. She has her business face on: neutral expression, hands above her shoulders. John moves behind her on silent bare feet, gun raised. She can see the outline of a phone in the pocket of his jeans, and for a moment, she curls her lip. Harold is probably listening in right now.

"I could have backup waiting out there," she says, as they walk through the living room to the small atrium that serves as an entranceway.

"You don't. I'd know." Apart from his words, John makes no noise behind her. She had forgotten how he could move, quiet as a cat despite his size.

He presses her to the door and frisks her, fast and thorough. He finds everything but the knife in the heel of her boot. Then they're through the door and onto the porch, and he spins her so they're face to face. 

Jess could disarm him, she could grab the gun right out of his hand, but the luxury of gazing directly into John's face is distracting. After sneaking glimpses for so long, this is like standing in a waterfall. She can finally drink her fill of him, even if his eyes are cold. 

"I heard what you did in Nairobi." 

Oh. That's a mouthful of cold water down the windpipe. Jess freezes, holds herself very still. Nairobi was a clusterfuck. It went down so fast that Jess doesn't know if the bullet in that kid's head was hers or Kara's. She feels sick. 

Now John is watching her with a searching expression. Whatever he sees makes him drop his shoulders and relax a little. 

Her hand moves on its own, swinging towards John's calm, open face. It's not even a punch, it's a shove, to get him out of her sight, to stop him seeing her. It's a clumsy move and that's why John deflects it easily. 

Unfortunately, they were both elite soldiers, and they're both amped up on adrenaline. John moves too fast and too accurately for Jess to slow her own reflexes, and then they're grappling. 

John is fighting to subdue, but Jess can't put the brakes on herself, can't slow her reactions down. Her head's still in Nairobi, in that frantic scrabble of limbs that breaks bones and looses bullets. John is on the ground in two minutes, knees pulled into his stomach, and Jess has his own gun trained on him. Her wound burns with each intake of breath, but she ignores it. Long training means her hands are steady, even when the pain is washing up over her.

"It's okay," John wheezes. She caught him in the diaphragm with her elbow, and it's going to take him a bit to catch his breath. This would normally be the time when Jess takes her headshot, but instead she keeps the weapon on him. 

Breathe, burn. Breathe, burn. There's something wet on her shoe, but she ignores it. She thinks she might be crying. That doesn't make any sense. 

John keeps his hands open and visible as he heaves for oxygen. "Stand down," he gasps. 

It's a cool night down here on the water. Jess expects each breath to taste of diesel and hot dust, but instead, there's damp chill from the water and the faint smell of lawn clippings. She clicks the safety on, lowers the gun. 

"Back with me?" John is still flat on his back like a turtle, but his face, though red and sweaty, is calm. Jess watches him take a few more breaths, each less laboured. 

"Sorry," she says, inadequately. After a moment, she offers him her hand. 

He ignores it, and she thinks he's rightfully angry at her, but he's looking at her shoes. 

"You're bleeding," he says. "Is that the GSW you brought into the ER?" 

The adrenaline is fading, and behind it comes clammy fatigue. Jess slumps against the porch rail.

"Yeah," she says. "Damn thing won't heal." 

John nods, and slowly stands upright. "Wonder why that is," he says, straightfaced. 

Jess shrugs one shoulder, and feels the cold air where her shirt has stuck to her abdomen with blood. They regard each other in silence, while waves wash against the shore and distant shouts drift over the water. 

"I've got first aid gear in the basement," says John."Let me patch it up for you." 

It goes against training, to follow someone into a room with no other exits, but this is John. If he's compromised then this is not a world Jess wants to inhabit. She follows him back into the house. 

John hits light panels without looking as they walk down the hall, and the house lights up, warm and welcoming. He goes down the basement stairs first, which Jess appreciates. Her nerves are still jangling, and knowing her exit is clear behind her is a first step towards settling them. 

"Stop ogling the safe. I know you opened it," John says, as he pulls out a white plastic tub and puts it on the workbench.

Jess eases herself up on the bench beside the first aid kit. Her legs dangle above the ground like she's a kid on a grown-up chair. "Can you blame me?" she says.

John grins. "I guess not."

They're bantering. It's not as easy-going as it once was, but it's comfortable and safe. 

He looks up, catches her in the act of observation, and his expression turns guarded. A professional mask has slipped down. He points to the spreading red stain on her shirt.

"Show me."

Jess looks over his shoulder and tugs her shirt all the way free from her pants. It peels away from her belly with a tacky sensation. 

John pulls on a pair of gloves and eases the dressing all the way off, then hisses at the way the wound has puckered under the old stitches.

"Oh, Jess." It must be bad, because he slips his hand to the small of her back checking for an exit wound.

"It's still in there," Jess says. His arm is warm. Jess can smell shampoo radiating upwards, see the wings of silver that ten years have added to his dark hair. The wall opposite her is clean and uncracked. There's nothing to focus on in the distance. She closes her eyes instead.

"Where were you when you got hit? Didn't they take you to a hospital?"

"It wasn't an option." In the darkness behind her eyelids, all she can think about are his hands. It makes her laugh, nervous at being this close to him. "Call it my retirement gift."

She has to get a hold of herself. She opens her eyes, looks for security cameras. Wonders about Harold breaking into John's house to install them.

That brings up another point. Has John put in his own surveillance cameras? "How did you know I was here?" she asks. The house had been empty when she arrived. The security system was good but not better than her.

John cracks open a plastic tube of antiseptic wash and squeezes it onto a sterile gauze pad. He cleans the wound, hands gentle and sure, and he doesn't answer the question.

Jess considers it while he works. One car in the garage, the freshly dry-cleaned dinner jacket. And now John is back, but not Peter.

"Date night not going so well, huh?" she says. 

John peels the backing off a dressing and throws the wrapping into the trash. 

"This is infected," he says. "And you're going to need a fresh suture here." She can see the colour in his cheeks, the way he is focusing on smoothing the edges of the dressing in place. His fingers pass close to the knife scar running down her ribcage.

"One of these days I'll get to finish a course of antibiotics," she says, before he says something about the scar or the haphazard spacing of those sutures. Kara did the best she could in the dark, on the side of a mountain, in a blizzard. Jess doesn't bear a grudge. Not for that, anyway. 

He rocks back on his heels and looks up at her. "You're not taking great care of yourself, Jess."

_Ouch._ "You installed cameras to spy on your husband, John." It's a shot in the dark, but he briefly meets her eyes then looks away. 

There's a long moment of silence between them, full of all the things neither of them want to say. Jess is surprised when it's her that takes pity on him.

"I thought I was doing better," she says. "I had a new boss, he was looking out for me. I kinda quit." 

John pushes upright from squatting – his knees pop a little as he rises – and he gathers all the debris from changing the dressing. "I wasn't spying on Peter. I was watching for someone coming to hurt him."

He's worried about his husband's safety. It's so completely the opposite thing Jess was expecting to hear that she snorts, and John gives her a hurt look.

"Sorry," she says, then scrambles to find a way to explain her reaction. "I guess you never gave up on being over-protective, huh."

"That is unfair," he says. "I never tried to push you out of harm's way." 

Oh, here comes some old hurt, bubbling up through the scar tissue. 

"A good word from someone inside Special Forces would have gone a long way when I applied. You could have spoken up for me."

"Who told you I didn't?" John says. 

This time it's Jess who rocks back, hit with nostalgia and regret and the burn of rejection, still sharp after all these years.

She opens her mouth but John's phone rings into the silence.

John slips it from his pocket. Whatever he reads there, it's enough to make him put the phone to his ear. "Yes?" he says. Jess can tell from the tone of his voice that he's talking to a stranger.

He shoots another quick glance in her direction, then passes the phone to her. "It's for you."


	9. Chapter 9

Jess knows who it must be on the phone before she has even put it to her ear. She feels an uncomfortable well of dread, because whatever has forced Harold to break cover must be very dire. She slides off the workbench, pulls her shirt back into position.

"What's happened?" she says. No need to say names, no need to pretend that Harold wasn't listening in. To be honest, she'd just accepted that he was. That's something she's already accustomed to, apparently. Even after only two weeks of working with the man.

"Ms Reese, I'm sorry to reach out like this…" Harold's voice is breathless and it sounds like he's in a car.

"Tell me," Jess says, short and functional, with John's phone pressed against her shoulder so she can tuck in her shirt.

"Detective Stills has acquired a warrant for Mr Paterson's arrest," Harold says. "The charges are spurious but he has notified the police in Mount Vernon that he is coming. They're dispatching officers now."

Jess pulls her hair back into a ponytail and fumbles in her pocket for a hair tie. "I can be there in ten minutes," she says, and hangs up. She slips the phone into her pocket. Harold can buy John a shiny new phone when this is over.

John passes her a rubber band from a jar on the workbench and she takes it without thinking.

"I have to go," she says. She eyes John's gun safe, and John steps in front of it.

"Tell me what's happening," he says. "You're going after cops?"

"Dirty cops," Jess says. 

John turns and thumbs in the combination on the safe. Jess breathes in the smell of gun oil and clean metal. "What do you need?"

Jess takes in the well-ordered array of weapons carefully racked and stored, then reaches for the ammunition on the top shelf. She grabs a couple of boxes, and steps back.

John's hand hovers over the SIG-Sauer and Jess catches his fingers, pulls them out of the way as she closes the safe.

"You're a nurse, not a soldier. It's been ten years. And I don't need backup." 

"You're injured. I'll come as field medic. It might have been ten years but I still know how to keep my head down."

Jess can't argue with that logic. And besides, Tim Paterson was in surgery less than a day ago. It can't hurt to have someone with medical experience on hand.

John's phone pings, and she takes it out.

_Mr Paterson will need assistance to move,_ Harold's text says. _Mr Arndt could provide useful support._

Jess sighs. "Do you have a vest?" she says. 

They take Jess's stolen car. John doesn't say anything about the wires hanging from the dash, or the bag in the back seat that Jess is obviously living out of. 

"Who's this guy you're working for?" John says into the silence. "He sounds… interesting."

"You mean uptight?" Jess says. 

"What's his operation like?"

That makes Jess laugh. "He's like… he has this abandoned building he works out of. Like Batman."

"What?" John says. The disbelief on his face is hilarious.

"I'm serious! He's super rich, and he uses his money to save people. I was helping him."

"Why would you ever stop doing that?" he says. "It sounds amazing."

"I fucked up," Jess says. 

John doesn't seem to be ashamed of her. He nudges her with his shoulder. "It happens," he says. "You can't win every time."

It's a simple answer, and it's not forgiveness, but it works. This isn't something she could have heard from Harold, but John's lived this. Sometimes a fuck up is just a fuck up.

"Can I ask you something?" she says.

"Sure." John's voice shows no trepidation.

"Why the cameras? Who do you think is coming for Peter?" The GPS system directs her though she didn't program it. 

The question lands hard on John, she can tell from his raised shoulders. 

"Peter's got some bad debt," he says. "I'm worried they're going to send heavies to the house." He looks sideways at her. "You don't seem surprised to hear that."

Jess raises her eyebrows and tries to think of a way to explain her lack of surprise that won't fracture the atmosphere of frankness between them. Fortunately, the bright lights of the hospital are coming up ahead.

Greenfields Care Facility is a compact building tucked in against the hospital proper. Jess slides out of the driver's seat.

"Go park it on the street," she says, and passes his phone through the open door. "Finch will tell you when I've got the Patersons clear."

John takes the phone but gets out of the car. "You have two civilians to protect, you need more than one pair of boots on the ground."

Jess frowns at him but Harold pipes up, tinny through the speaker of John's phone.

"He's right, Ms Reese. I don't like it either, but at the very least, you're going to need someone to push Mr Paterson's chair."

John stares at the phone in his hand in mild horror, as if it had suddenly sprouted a mouth.

"Fine," she says. "Keep your head down. And I'm in charge."

That earns her a snort of laughter from John, but he falls in behind her as if they were on a training run.

As they're jogging towards the building, he says, "Was he listening to us talk?"

"He's always listening," Jess says. "You get used to it, after a while."

When the elevator doors open, Jess sees a police guard at the door to the Paterson's suite. Local police, Jess thinks, not part of Stills' dirty gang, but that makes it harder. Fortunately he's sitting, engrossed in the pages of a five-year-old People magazine, so he doesn't look up when the elevator dings.

"Damn it," she says, and pulls John into the elevator. 

John resists. He holds up his lanyard with a grin. "Bet I can get in there. I don't know how good your guy is with computers…" His phone buzzes and he takes it out. 

_Very good,_ says Harold. _Your card will scan._

Jess watches him nod a greeting at passing staff then confidently scan his card at a locker room door, then she glances up at a security camera. 

"Please stop enabling him," she says.

John returns in pale blue scrubs with his lanyard around his neck. He waggles his eyebrows at Jess as he walks past and up to the door of the Paterson's suite.

"Excuse me," he says to the cop. "There's a guy hanging around on the emergency stairs. Thought I should let you know."

The cop looks down towards the door to the stairs. "Stay here," he says, and jogs away. 

John stands obediently in front of the door. When the corridor is clear, Jess steps into view.

"He had a photo of you on his phone," John says. 

"Let's get moving," Jess says. 

John's swipe card works again on the door to the Paterson's suite. Inside, Jamie stands in front of her father's bed, as if she can protect him. 

"Mr Finch told me to give you this," she says, and hands over an earpiece. "I've packed up Dad's meds." She looks haggard but determined, with a messenger bag slung on one shoulder and her hoodie pulled up to shield her face. 

Jess slips the earpiece into position, and unexpectedly feels calmer.

"Hello, Ms Reese." The voice is steady and calm. Jess is shocked at how good it is to hear him again. 

John opens a closet in the room and pulls out a folded wheelchair, kicking it open and snapping the footplate down with quick, easy movements. "Hey, Mr Paterson," he says, hands moving over the monitors to disconnect them. "I'm John. I know you're feeling pretty beat up right now, but we're going to move you to somewhere safe."

Tim Paterson is in a hospital gown with an oxygen cannula under his nose, but he somehow has enough energy to give a sarcastic snort at the sight of Jessica.

Jess ignores him. She pulls up Jamie's hoodie to hide her face. "You stay next to the chair, okay? If anything happens, you keep between it and the wall." 

Then John scoops Tim into the wheelchair, and the man takes a deep gasping breath. 

"It's okay, he's fine," John says in answer to Jamie's silent, panicked glance. Tim rallies, puts a hand on Jamie's arm to let her know that yes, he is all right.

They make a quick and silent trek to the parking lot, and then into the car that Harold has provided.

Jess gives the driver a fifty. "Take the night off, buddy."

John gives her a worried glance as he helps Mr Paterson into the car.

Jess meets his eyes. "The fewer civilians the better," she says. 

She's sitting in the driver's seat when she hears John whisper to Jamie. 

"Don't worry. We'll look after you and your dad." 

She glances back and sees that John is holding her hand. Jamie looks relieved, and glad that John's there. 

Jess realises that she is, too. For all her griping about John losing his head after so long as a civilian, he has been as solid and reliable at her back as Harold. The three of them are making a good team.


	10. Chapter 10

An hour later, Jess is pretty sure they're being followed. There's a dark blue sedan hanging back a few cars, but when she pulls out to pass again, they do the same. 

"Think we've picked up a tail, Finch." Jess flicks on the indicator nice and early, and is gratified when the blue car slips into the same lane as them. 

Jess concentrates on keeping their car at a steady pace as behind them the blue car passes, then passes again. Now they're nose to tail with Jess's car and she needs somewhere to take this. 

"Find me some space to lose them." She doesn't want to accelerate away until she knows in which direction safety lies. 

A few seconds later, a red line snakes across the GPS screen. 

"Your boss works fast," says John. 

Jess eyes the map, and matches it to the road ahead. "He has his moments," she says.

Speeding through a changing signal severs the connection between them and the blue sedan. She hears squeals and horns behind them, and sees the blue sedan cut across traffic. Fucking cops. 

She turns the GPS towards John. "Navigate," she says, and floors the accelerator.

For a while, the only sound in the car is John's voice, directing Jess to turn, giving her feedback on what the other car is doing. She's working at speed, but they quickly work out a rhythm. In the back seat, both Tim and his daughter have fallen asleep.  


When houses gives way to clusters of outlet malls and the occasional auto shop, Jess decides they've left the suburbs far enough behind.

"He's dropping back," John says. "Think he's giving up?" 

Jess pictures Stills behind the wheel and she shakes her head. "They've got too much to lose." . 

"So where is he?"

Jess says nothing. She focuses on the road until she sees the SUV coming at them from the side road.

John sees it too, and reaches behind him to stabilize Mr. Paterson for the impact. 

Jess plants her foot down and the engine responds with a snarl and a surge. The SUV misses the body of their car, but strikes the back right corner. They both spin, then the SUV slams head-on into the blue car behind them. 

The impact throws her against John. and Jamie wakes up screaming. Her voice becomes the screech of metal on metal as their car scrapes against a blue post office drop box. There's a tinkle of raining glass as someone shoots the window out. John and Jess both scoot low in their seats. In her peripheral vision, Jess sees John's hand pressing down on Jamie's shoulder. 

There's always a long, quiet moment after a multi-vehicle impact when everyone involved processes the shock, and Jess only has a few seconds to take advantage of it. 

She shoves her door open with a creak. Tim Paterson is passed out, and John is taking his pulse. Jamie is curled up in the leg-well with her hands around her knees, watching. John glances up at Jess. 

"Was that a shot?" 

Jess nods. She passes him her earpiece, phone and gun. 

John takes them without looking, his attention on his patient. As soon as his fingers curl around the butt, he starts and stares at Jess. "What's the plan?" 

"Harold, get them safe." Jess ignores the sounds of Harold's protest over the earpiece in John's hand. "I'll keep them distracted."

"So you're just gonna walk into a fight unarmed?" John is horrified.

"I don't need a gun to make them sorry they were born." 

Behind her, she hears John's one-sided conversation with Harold. The door of their car creaks closed, and then the engine kicks over, nice and strong. They won't have any trouble reaching safety. That just leaves Jessica to clean up behind them.

She sees a red circle of blood dripping from the windshield of the SUV. Azzarello is slumped against the wheel. Oil drips from the crumpled hood of the blue sedan, and as she approaches she smells the heat of the engine burning it away. Jess squares her shoulders and gets ready to work. She can't see Stills behind the crazed glass but she knows he's there. 

When he finally crawls out of the wreckage on hands and knees, Stills looks like the coyote at the end of a Road Runner cartoon: broken arm from two weeks ago, broken nose still taped and eyes blackened from the fight in the warehouse. His head drips blood down one cheek, and his gun is loose in his hand. 

"You stupid interfering bitch." He doesn't have the strength to raise his gun. 

Jess is tired. She wishes she could walk away from this walking wreck, but Stills won't change. He'll always assume he can bully his way out of a problem. His poor dumb partner will get sucked into one terrible situation after another in the name of loyalty. Always the same trick, over and over…

She feels rather than hears Fusco moving behind her, same as he did in the warehouse. She's running as he raises his gun from the corner of a furniture store, and it throws him, because he doesn't take the shot. Jess doesn't give him the chance to correct his aim.

She grabs his gun hand and pulls him in close by it. Then, like they're dancing, she spins him, puts her belly to his back. Just like that Fusco's gun is on his boss. He's too shocked to protest but she hears his breath speeding up. Jess keeps his arm straight, his finger on the trigger, the sight on Still's forehead.

"You know," she says, conversationally to Fusco. "I tried to make my boss hire you the other day."

Fusco is sweating in the cool night air. "What's that supposed to mean?!"

"It was a bad idea," Jess admits. "At the time, though, I figured a corrupt cop would make a better employee than someone like me."

"You think I won't shoot right through him?" Stills calls. "Obviously you have no idea how much money is riding on this."

"Listen," Fusco says. Jess isn't sure if he's talking to her or Stills. "We can step back from this, we can let the girl go…"

"That kind of decision making ain't up to you, Lionel." Stills is grinning as he aims. He's still moving sluggishly. 

"Don't worry," Jess whispers in Fusco's ear. "I've got your back." Then she and Fusco pull the trigger together. Stills falls face down on the wet road. A spreading puddle of glossy dark red creeps outwards from his skull. He doesn't move again. 

Jess releases Fusco's arm, and his gun, and steps away from his body. She feels the cold, damp night air fill the space between them. Beside her, Fusco takes big, heaving breaths. 

"You're going to leave the Patersons alone," Jess says.

Fusco is waxy pale, no more sweat, just terror. And, Jess thinks, a little bit of relief. Instead of shooting her, he's dragging himself over to Stills' body, checking his pulse. He doesn't look back at Jess.

Jess feels for him. This is what Ordos was like for her. 

"I'm going to go now, Fusco," she says. "You decide how you want to handle this. You're the guy who deals with the bodies, after all. Maybe you can put him somewhere he won't be found for a very long time. Later we can have a little talk about the future."

She doesn't hear anything as she walks away. She tries not to picture Fusco kneeling in the rain next to the body of a man he was probably stupid enough to think of as a friend. She turns a corner, wondering where she can buy a phone to check in with Harold, when she sees John flat against the wall. The gun is low by his side, but she can tell from the look on his face that he saw everything.

"What are you doing here? she snaps.

"Never hurts to have back-up." John falls in beside her as her strides lengthen

"I told you to stay with the Patersons. You were supposed to keep them safe." 

John seems startled by her tone. "They're safe," he says. "Your boss met us at the Shell station a block away, he put the Patersons in an armoured Humvee with a driver."

She presses her lips together and keeps walking.

John tries a tentative grin. "He sure is something, your boss."

"He sure is," Jess says.

"To be honest, I thought he was some kind of finance guy," John says. "But he's too good with the tech to be an accountant. How'd you guys meet?" 

Jess should take the olive branch. But here on the rain-slicked road in the middle of the night, the pretence that John is here because of their relationship feels hollow. 

"John."

He stops and smiles at her, easy and calm. "Yeah?"

"Why do you think I was at your house?" 

John shrugs. "Nostalgia?" 

"I was there because your husband isn't a nice guy, John. I was there because he came up on Harold's radar." 

She's watching John's face, so she sees the shutters go down. 

"I know, John. I know what he does. I know how bad it's gotten."

John is so still, so tense, that Jess thinks she could shatter him with one touch. 

"The thing I don't get is why you'd let him treat you so badly," she says. "You were the best soldier I knew. If you wanted to live on the edge, all you had to do was re-enlist." 

John blinks, then curls his lip. "Thanks for the life advice," he says. "It's been ten years. I think I know which one of us has more experience with the real world. You've never had to make a home. You've never had a real relationship." 

"That's fair," Jess says. "But you know what? I don't want a relationship with a real estate broker who can't keep his hands off the ponies. Who forges my signature on a second mortgage. Who is planning to do away with me in some soap-opera life insurance farce." 

They stare at each other. It's raining again, a soft, indecisive drizzle of dampness that clings to John's eyelashes. Then his head tilts suddenly, a movement Jess recognises. Her hand goes to her own ear, but of course, she gave her earpiece to John. She wonders for a moment what Harold is saying. 

"I'm going home," John says. "Harold's sending a car. Don't follow me."

Jess opens her mouth to rail against this decision. John meets her gaze and holds it. All the things Jess wants to say surge forward at once: _don't go back there, please don't get killed, I want you to be safe, I can't feel safe if you're not safe._

It all sits in the back of her throat and it burns. John turns away, and Jess doesn't know what will make him come back to her.


	11. Chapter 11

Jess wakes with her face pressed to someone's back, a woman from the fineness of the shoulderblades. She blinks then stills, evaluating her situation: she's slowly sliding into the gap between the two twin beds. She's wearing only a bra, and only just. Her mouth tastes like a grave. 

A few seconds later she's scrambling for the bathroom, and heaving her guts up. It's a brief paroxysm, but it gives her time to consider the grime accumulating between the tiles, and the chips in the enamel bowl of the toilet. 

By the time she claws herself upright and rinses her mouth, the other woman is sitting up and rubbing her eyes. She's white with short dark hair and clever eyes that narrow at Jess' approach. 

"Hi," she says to Jess. Her voice is careful but curious. Jess feels the woman's gaze move from scar to scar, finishing on the last and most livid wound on her belly. She turns sideways, breaks the woman's line of sight, and picks up her shirt from the floor. The rest of her suit is scattered on the floor. 

"I'm Beth," says the woman. "That was an interesting night." 

Jess doesn't answer. She's trying to remember how she ended up in a dive motel room with a stranger. There was definitely a bar, a cheap, neon-lit place that smelled of watery beer and industrial cleaners. 

She slides one arm into her shirt then the other. There's a tear in the front. Her cuffs are dotted with blood. 

Beth hugs her knees, rests her chin on them. "I've never had anyone fight for my honour before." 

Jess' knuckles are split and bruised. She hopes she didn't kill anyone. She doesn't have a gun, but that doesn't mean much. Her jacket is crumpled against the door where she presumably threw it off.

She shakes it out and drapes it over the back of a chair, aware that Beth is watching her. She turns her back so she doesn't have to meet her eyes when she asks about last night. 

"So I fought someone?" 

Beth's laugh is breathy and low. Jess can see how it caught her ear. 

"Yeah, my stalker ex," she says. "He literally didn't know what hit him." 

Jess buttons up the shirt, steps into underwear, pulls on pants. She's not sure how to ask Beth if she murdered this man last night. There's a sticky patch inside her jacket sleeve. She tries not to touch it with her arm. In one pocket is a packet of cigarettes and a cheap plastic lighter. 

"Where is he now?" she asks.

Beth laughs again. Just for an impossible moment, Jess is tempted to crawl back into bed with her, weather out this hangover in her company. 

"He's in the trunk," says Beth. 

Jess' stomach drops. Damn it, now she's going to have to get rid of a body, clean Beth's car of prints, make sure there's nothing to trace back to Jess. Or worse, to Harold. 

"We should probably let him out. He's going to be pissed as hell." 

Jess lets out her breath in a gasp. "I'll do that," she says. "You stay in bed." 

"We could both stay in bed?" Beth says. She leans back against the cheap vinyl-covered bedhead. "I know it's not too fancy, but I have his credit card. We could go somewhere fancy." 

"I'd love to," says Jess. She lifts Beth's car keys from the purse on the table. "But I really need to check in with my boss."

Beth's blue hybrid is parked at an angle outside the room. Jess' eyes water in the grey morning light and the smell of beer wafting up from her clothes makes her stomach flip-flop. The motel is called the Pink Elephant Inn, and it's nestled between a gas station and a 24 hour gym.

When her footsteps crunch over the gravel, a muffled voice from the trunk starts screaming. "Beth, I'll fucking kill you, you fucking bitch, you're gonna be sorry." His voice fades away to a squeak when Jess raps her knuckles on the trunk.

"Keep it down in there, buddy." 

There's a pale green flier under the wiper, a special offer from the gym next door. Jess rummages for the pen in her jacket pocket, scrawls her current number on the paper and tucks it back in place. It seems like a decent thing to do.

Inside the trunk, Beth's ex is dishevelled and bloody, but he's definitely alive. His lip is thickening and one of his eyes has swollen shut. His wrists and ankles are ziptied. 

"I don't really have a problem killing people," she says, conversationally. "Go near Beth again, and all I'll be is mildly inconvenienced. Okay?" 

The man nods eagerly. His sincerity is probably fuelled by the pocket knife in her hand. She frees his feet and walks away. 

Now that there's nothing to distract her, her headache swells. She hasn't been blackout drunk for a year. Her skin itches, and her eyes are barely open. She squints at the cars zooming past on the highway: mostly New York registrations. She didn't leave the state at least. 

There's a plastic bench seat outside the gas station, and though it's beaded with dew, she slumps into it, rests her head in her hands. She doesn't know where she is, she doesn't know what day it is, and worst of all, she doesn't know if John is safe. In a minute, she'll get up and do something about that, but for now, she just wants to cradle her skull against the pain. 

Gravel pops as a car moves slowly in her direction. It brakes, and she hears the door open. Soft classical music spills out, barely audible above the traffic. 

"I don't care who you are," she says through her fingers. "If you're here to kill me, just get it over with." 

The smell of strong coffee gets closer. The footsteps are uneven and familiar. 

"Here," says Harold. He peels one hand from her head and wraps it around the handle of the travel mug. 

Jess takes it, breathes in the steam curling up from the vent. The coffee from the library isn't necessarily high-end, but it's good, and it's familiar, and it's right here. She takes a sip, and it's wonderful. She pushes her hair out of her eyes, and tries awkwardly to smooth it into place.

Harold takes off his coat and lays it on the seat beside her, then sits down. He reaches into his jacket and passes over her phone. The screen is cracked in one corner from the crash. 

"I stopped at the bar next door," Harold says. "When they reopen, they will discover that their closed circuit cameras glitched and lost the data from last night." 

Jess takes another fortifying sip of coffee; her voice is raspy and her throat raw. "How's John?" 

"He's safe at home for now," says Harold. "How are you?" 

Jess laughs, and it's halfway a groan. "I'll be okay soon. Thanks for coming out here to bring me coffee." 

Harold's sigh seems fond. He pats her hand. "For you, Ms Reese, I'll break into the Lazy Boy Saloon and commit sabotage." 

They sit in silence for a while, as the sunlight gets stronger and the early morning mist lifts. 

"He can't stay there," Jess says. 

"No, he can't," Harold says. "But he has to feel safe enough to leave, and the only way to do that, Ms Reese, is to be ready to help him every time he needs it." 

When the flow of traffic is beginning to lighten, Harold straightens his back. 

"Well. As I'm sure you're aware from your very diligent investigation into my background, I also have a day job to get to." 

Jess drains the last of her coffee. S"You're not very dedicated to this day job, Mr Wren, which is a good thing, since you only show up at Universal Heritage Insurance twice a week on average and never before eleven."

Harold laughs, unexpectedly pleased with her detective work. "There are some perks to being on the board, Ms Reese. May I offer you a lift back to the city?" 

"Thanks," says Jess. When she stands, her joints pop and ache. No more cheap motel beds, she promises herself. 

They're walking slowly towards the car when Harold stiffens. 

A jolt of adrenaline clears her hangover fog. Jess is upright in a moment, covering him

"What is it?" she says. "What did you see?"

Harold is shocked. Jess didn't know he could be. "I didn't see anything, Ms Reese," he says. It's exactly the tone he uses on the rare occasion that he mentions his Machine. 

An anomalous sound cuts through the buzz and hum of fuel pumps and traffic. It's a sound from childhood, a jangle that reminds her of long summer days, of holding a quarter tight in her small fist.

"Is that a payphone?" she says. 

Wearily, Harold stands and folds his coat over his arm. "Excuse me, Ms Reese," he says, and limps away towards the side of the gas station. 

Jess follows. Harold moves surprisingly quickly, but she catches up in time to see him pick up the receiver of a faded blue plastic phone affixed to the wall. He puts it to his ear and frowns. He doesn't say anything. Jess leans in, but all she hears is a beep before he puts the receiver back in its cradle.

Harold's defensive wariness gives way to thin-lipped worry.

"What is it?" says Jess. She suddenly feels the absence under her arm where her handgun should be. 

Harold puts a hand on Jess' creased lapel and gently pushes her back toward the car. "We need to go back to New Rochelle," he says. "I'm afraid I just received Mr Arndt's number again."

For a moment Jess can't even feel her hangover anymore. "How far are we from John's place now?" She still isn't sure exactly where she is. 

Harold limps towards the car. "Less than an hour, if the traffic is willing," he says. He gives her a quick sidelong look. "Perhaps I'll drive until you're feeling more composed." 

Jess sways as she scrapes her hair back into a ponytail and tries not to wince as he weaves through traffic. 

"Tone it down, speed-demon," she says. "Getting pulled over by the cops is going to waste more time than you'll gain."

Harold grimaces and touches the brake. 

"What's the time pressure on this?" Jess asks, to give him something to talk about.

Harold doesn't take his gaze from the road. "Contacting me in this way, outside of normal procedures? I think I can say that the situation is immediate and dire."

Jess nods and flexes her shoulders, glad of her training. Being able to shove away a hangover when she needs to is a definite plus. 

"Here," Harold says, passing her his own phone. "The yellow icon, shaped like a camera." 

Jess taps the icon, and looks down on a scrolling array of images of the Victorian waterfront house in New Rochelle. The footage is live: Peter stands on the driveway in running gear, fixing his earbuds in place. In the house, nothing else is moving. Then she sees an interior of the master bedroom and her heart clenches: John is face down on the bed, half under the blankets. Then he takes a deep breath and rearranges himself so that he's spread diagonally across the mattress, half off the pillows. It makes her smile, even in this situation, because he always slept like that, in weird, awkward shapes that she had to fit her own body around.

"He's fine," she says in response to Harold's sideways glance. "He's asleep. Peter just left the house for a run." 

"On his own?" Harold says, and frowns. "He usually runs at night, with John." 

"What's our ETA?" 

The car surges forward again as they break clear of the last clot of traffic. "Twenty minutes," Harold says. 

"We need a plan," she says. "We know Peter's planning to kill him. What are his options? He's not going to be able to overpower John. He'd have to shoot him in the back." She watches John sprawl on the bed. "Or in his sleep." 

"Not shooting," Harold says. "He won't be able to claim the life insurance if he's being investigated for murder."

Jess has staged a few suicides in her career. The details are a lot harder to arrange when it's someone you know—arranging their body, putting the gun in their hand. She wonders if Peter is squeamish.

Harold's eyes are far away, like he's scanning the Arndts' insurance policy from memory.

"The policy is void on suicide as well," says Harold, as if he can read her thoughts. I believe there's a two hundred thousand dollar bonus if death comes from a violent crime. Four hundred thousand if it's an accident." 

The clock on the dash clicks over to 6:30, and it's Jess' turn to frown. There's something odd about the way John is sleeping; he hasn't moved in the last ten minutes. She magnifies the image on the screen so she can see his chest rise and fall with each breath

"What's wrong?" Harold asks. 

There are wine glasses on the bedside table. Jess pinches and stretches the image as much she can. There are dregs of red wine, but in one glass only. Then she realises: one glass is clean. Peter has rinsed one glass and put it back. Why only one? 

"Does Peter have access to any sedatives?" she asks. 

"He has a new prescription for Xanax," Harold says. "He filled it last week." 

The houses are getting bigger, the lawns smoother. They're almost there. Jess leans forward in her seat. She's about to ask if Peter could organise a hit when an alarm goes off on Harold's phone. She glances down at the screen: an icon of a smoke detector is lit up. 

"Is there a number on the screen?" asks Harold. 

Jess nods. "Three." 

"There's a fireplace in the dining room," says Harold. "The alarm goes off occasionally, but they haven't lit the fire since December." 

The view from the kitchen camera is hazy, and as she watches, a second notification for the kitchen smoke alarm pops up on the phone. The view from the dining room camera shows the table engulfed in flames. Thick white candles sag in the heat. Several of them have toppled over. 

Jess hisses, and dials 911. When the operator answers, she says, "Uh, I think there's a house on fire on Shore Road? I can hear the smoke detectors."

The operator takes down her false details and assures her that the fire department has been notified. 

Harold clenches his jaw and rounds the corner onto Shore Road with a squeal of tires. The neighbourhood seems ridiculously calm to Jess. Just another sleepy street in the suburbs, just another chilly spring morning. 

Jess vaults out of the car before Harold has a chance to brake and hits the driveway pavement running. The moment the car door is open, she can hear the smoke detectors shrieking. She passes a kid standing on the lawn with a wrapped newspaper in hand. The pedals on the girl's bike still turn where she's let it fall. 

"Get back!" Jess shouts as she sprints past. 

She goes for the dining room window, hoping to stifle the flames before they get out of control, then there's a sound like a bullet. She dives for cover, and when she looks for the shooter, she sees one of the French doors has cracked in the intense heat. 

She puts her elbow through the cracked glass and clears an opening. The wave of heat that pours out through the opening is a slap in the face. The fire is already out of control. She backs up on the lawn, and launches herself upwards. 

It's a matter of seconds to scale the wall; the fussy, Victorian panelling is hot to the touch but it has plenty of handholds. The fire roars beneath her like a crowd at a baseball game, and the tiles of the roof crack and pop with the rising heat. Old houses burn fast.

She doesn't see any open flame on the second floor, though the smoke is thick enough to muffle the din of the alarms. She makes for the bathroom where she wets a couple of towels. She's wringing them out when she hears coughing in the bedroom. 

John is awake, sitting on the side of the unmade bed, looking down at his feet. She shouts his name. Then she sees the gun in his hand. 

John's face is disturbingly tranquil. There's even a tiny smile lurking about his lips. A bruise is coming up on one cheekbone.

"Come on," she says from the doorway. John doesn't respond so she barks it like an order. "John! Time to go!"

He doesn't move. He doesn't even look at her. "I think you were right about Peter," he says, slurring. His eyes are wide and glassy. Each breath is slow, shallow and unconcerned. 

Jess crouches in front of him, and reaches slowly for his gun. He jerks it clumsily out of the way, so she drops her hands. She doesn't want to wrestle him for it while his hands are fumbling and his reflexes are dulled. 

"Give me the gun, John." She keeps her voice calm. There's crackling coming from the hallway door. The carpet is uncomfortably hot through her shoes.

John shakes his head. "Need it," he says. "Don't wanna die in a fire." 

Jesus. "We have to go," she says again, but it's like futility is contagious, and now she can hear it in her own voice. "The whole house is going up."

"Good," he says. His lip is split, Jess notices. She reaches up to touch it, and he doesn't wince away.

"I saw it coming," he says. "I let him do it. Been letting him for years."

She doesn't realise that the pity in her expression is so visible until John smiles. 

"S'okay," he says. He leans down to kiss the top of her head. The familiarity makes Jess's chest ache. He was always so gentle, this great big soldier that she loved. She feels the years pull at her, the way the mud sucked at her feet on every step out of Ordos.

She reaches up to cup John's face, fingers barely brushing the skin. It's hard to believe she has gentleness left in her, but it's no surprise that John is the one to help her find it. 

They stay that way for too long: Jess on one knee in front of him, his face in her hands.

"You've had enough, huh?" Jess says, eventually. 

John nods. 

"I get it," says Jess. She sits down next to him on the bed. "I could think of worse ways to go. I'd rather be with someone I love than down in the mud in Outer fucking Mongolia." She throws an arm around his shoulder, leans her head against his arm and lets out a sigh. "You know, it's kind of a relief to just stop." 

Startled, John looks at her. "No," he says, and Jess is heartened by the vigour returning to his voice. "Jess, you have to go"

Jess shakes her head. "I left you behind at the airport," she says. "I was too caught up in my great noble sacrifice to see you were really asking me for help. I won't leave you alone now."

"I don't want you to do that!" John says. He shoves at her but he's sloppy and sedated and she doesn't move.

"I'm not leaving you behind." Jess lies down on the bed. "We go together, or we don't go at all." 

John makes an incoherent, angry sound. He tries to coordinate himself enough to drag her off the bed but instead he falls on top of her. 

Their bodies lurch around on the bed, and it's the clumsiest, most absurd thing, like teenagers trying to fuck, all elbows and noses and awkwardness. Jess ends up holding John still, feeling all the way down to his hand on the gun.

She wraps her hand around his fingers, pulls them slowly away. The gun falls into her lap, and she brings John's hand to her lips and kisses the knuckles, softly, softly, until she feels him relax in her arms.

"How about this time we save each other?" she says. 

John nods, and she feels a wave of jubilation. _This is the way it should be, _she thinks, as she helps him up. _Together and into a better future._ __

__"Never loved this place." John stands on one wobbly leg and puts the other out the window. "Didn't want to hurt his feelings."_ _

____

____

"I didn't want to be rude about your home." Jess puts her hand on his head to stop him bashing it on the frame as he ducks. "But it never seemed like your kind of place."

John steps onto the hot roof tiles and into the cold morning air. "I tried to love it," he says. "Think I'm done now."


	12. Chapter 12

Jess pushes through the smoke and is startled to see a tumult of activity gathered around the fire. The house is ringed with fire-trucks, ambulances and police cars. They've all turned their sirens off, but the lights strobe against the large pale houses on Shore Road, bright enough to make John wince. 

Jess helps him to the edge of the roof, and immediately firemen bring a ladder to hurry them down. The two of them are ushered along the lawn, now slick with run-off from the hoses, towards a waiting ambulance. John sits in the open door, and Jess stands beside him. The ambulance is parked on a small rise in the road, so Jess can see down to the sidewalk surrounding John's house. The pageantry of the emergency response is clearly laid out below. Small groups of people are gathered at the edge of the police perimeter. Jess sees a lot of cellphones filming. They're mostly turned towards the fire itself, but she turns her face aside just in case. 

Paramedics descend the moment she and John arrive. One slings a foil blanket around John's shoulders, then unfolds one for Jess. 

"I'm fine," she says, holding up a hand to stop him. The police will be coming for a statement and she can't let them see her. She turns to John. "I won't be far away," she says. She doesn't want to leave him. 

From the way John reaches out of the foil blanket for her hand, he's not happy about it either. He licks his lips and swallows. After the smoke, his voice is hoarse. "Peter?"

"I'll go find him," Jess promises. 

John doesn't let go of her fingers until she meets his eyes. She's not sure if that expression is fear or hope. Dread, maybe. He shakes his head, a tiny movement, but it's enough. Jess sighs and nods. Peter stays alive and relatively unharmed, at least until John gives her the okay. 

She squeezes his hand once, and slips away. It's easy to vanish between the emergency vehicles scattered across the lawn and sidewalk. She stands behind a group of rubberneckers. From the sidewalk, she can see the lit interior of the ambulance, but John is invisible behind the people crowded at the ambulance door.

She's gotten out of sight just in time. As soon as there's a gap between the cluster of paramedics, two officers detach from the group on the lawn and come towards him. 

Jess remains watchful as the paramedics check John over. On the other side of the street, Harold stands on a rise of lawn, presumably doing the same. Bystanders jostle him, and he occasionally offers comment, but unlike them, his attention is fixed on the ambulance, not the burning house. 

Because she's looking for it, It isn't long before Peter's sandy hair is visible, shoving through the crowd on the sidewalk. Jess glances at the ambulance: the police are still interviewing John. Jess takes her chance to leave him and intercept Peter. She promised she wouldn't kill him. No promises were made about twisting his arm and walking him away from John.

Peter is sweating and red-faced as he pushes through the rubberneckers and onto the lawn. Firemen descend to stop him from running into the house. 

"No! No, my husband is in there!" He leans into the arms holding him back. His back is to the ambulance. He hasn't thought to look for survivors. 

Jess holds her breath. Any second now, they're going to break the news. She hopes it shatters him. She thinks it might shatter her. Her shoulders are rigid and her body cold like a pane of glass.

John steps from between the paramedics and walks towards Peter. He walks through the crowd which seems to still as he passes. Their excited chatter momentarily fades. It's probably the expression on John's face.

When he stops, he's standing behind Peter, tall and steady in the blue and red flashing lights. John is still pale, with mussed hair and red-rimmed eyes. Jess can see how much effort goes into holding his body taut against the sedation.

Peter finally notices the quiet of the crowd, and turns to see John. His panicked expression falters. This reaction hangs in the air a moment too long before he throws his arms around John, squeezes him tight. 

Peter murmurs something to John. John closes his eyes, and Jess sees him swallow once. Then he eases his hands between the two of them and pushes Peter back. It's gentle but definite, and it gives Peter no chance but to obey. He seems surprised. 

John's gaze passes over Jess but he tilts his head in her direction in acknowledgement. Then he turns and walks back to the ambulance. 

"John!" Peter says, shocked. There's real hurt in his expression, but then his jaw clenches and his eyes narrow. Jess can see the strategies forming as he glances from left to right. She keeps her own gaze on the burning house, but she keeps him in her peripheral vision. He's checking for witnesses, before he reasserts his control. 

He strides forward towards the ambulance, and that's the release Jess needs in order to act.

She slides out of the crowd, ready to pull Peter aside and vanish him. She can do that easily enough with one shove into an open trunk. That reminds her to check in with Harold, who will have to bring their car around. 

The place where Harold was standing is empty.

Then Peter's stride stutters. Jess has to pull up quickly to avoid slamming into his back. Then she blinks, because Harold is standing in Peter's path. He has a folder tucked under one arm and his face is a cold mask. 

"Mr Arndt." It's Harold's voice and yet it's not. Jess feels the urge to gasp, but she's better trained than that. She has never heard Harold speak like this. He sounds like he could kill.

"Who the hell are you?" Peter puts a hand up to push him aside. Harold blocks him with the folder. 

Peter grabs at it. "What the hell is this?" 

"Your mortgage papers," Harold says. "The second mortgage. The mortgage on which you forged your husband's signature." He doesn't have to mention the police; Peter's gaze immediately flicks in the direction of the squad cars.

_If you threaten him, he'll hit you,_ Jess thinks at Harold. She moves up close behind Peter, to grab his arm the moment he pulls it back to strike. 

"I've also included a transcript of a conversation with a Mr Michael Seriale regarding a number of payday loans, a verifiable search engine history from your laptop, and copies of the three life insurance policies you took out on your husband." 

Peter's fists are clenched but he's listening carefully to everything Harold says. "Are you… are you blackmailing me?" 

"Yes." Harold says it simply and calmly. 

The folder trembles in Peter's hands, as if he would rather throw it into the fire like he did with all his other problems. 

Harold stands beside him, hands folded in front of him. He radiates calm in the midst of frenzied activity, and he is completely uninterested in the destruction of a million-dollar property.

"You will accede to all of John's requests, which will be conveyed to you via his attorneys," Harold says, when the silence has stretched long enough. "You will not contact him again. I will hold my copies of this information, and you will stay far, far away from John for the rest of your life." 

Peter rallies at the mention of John's name. "What is John to you? Your midlife crisis?"

Harold simply stares at Peter until Peter's shoulders sag.

"You will be watched, Mr Arndt. At all times. I will not allow you to hurt another person ever again."

Jess knows it's over when Peter swallows. Harold sees it too, because he turns and walks toward Jess, his smile wide and warm.

"How is John?" he says. His posture is different now: slightly lopsided, with a more visible limp. 

"He's getting along with the paramedics," Jess says. "What happens when threats aren't enough to stop him?" There's an unspoken offer in her words. Harold knows her well enough by now to hear it.

Harold puts a hand on her wrist. To others it might look like he's leaning on her for aid, but Jess knows better. She falls into step beside him. 

"Thank you, Ms Reese, but this is my wheelhouse. I know that Peter Arndt will try every way he can to wriggle out of my grasp." He smiles, and while it's not the chilling expression Jess saw before, it's not a nice smile. "I'm looking forward to it."

They walk over the wet grass to where the ambulance is parked.

"Thank you," Jess says. "John is important to me, and you've made him safe."

"We both made him safe, Ms Reese. I could not have rushed into a burning house."

The sun is up properly, melting away the dew. Jess feels like the light is pouring into her, too. She grins at Harold, who is immediately wary.

"Ms Reese, if you intend to bestow some gesture of affection, please know I find that sort of thing very discomfiting." 

Jess stands on tiptoes to reach his forehead, and plants a kiss there. "Thank you," she says, again. Then to cover the awkwardness, she says, "I promise I'll never do that again."

"I should think not," Harold says, but his cheeks are pink.


	13. Chapter 13

John refuses to let the paramedics take him to the hospital. When Harold repeats the suggestion, he shrugs.

"I'd rather sleep it off," he says in Harold's backseat. He makes his point by closing his eyes and slumping against the window. Jess sits beside him, watching him breathe. It's hard to look away

The drive is long, heading into the city late in the morning. Harold is exhausted, judging from the careful way he checks over his shoulder when he merges.

"You want me to drive?" Jess asks. "I'll be good for another day or so yet." Adrenaline is still pulsing through her body. She feels like her eyes will never close again.

Harold shakes his head. "Your enthusiasm and stamina terrify me. Thank you, no. I will be fine." Then he shows he's learned a thing or two about adrenaline junkies, because he pulls into a McDonalds and loads Jess up with cheap carbs.

The smell of grease drags John slowly out of slumber. He wakes up while his hand is reaching for Jess' fries. She yanks them out of the way without looking, and they both laugh. Her legs are curled up with her feet under his butt, which makes for an awkward moment while they sort out limbs and paper sacks.

John munches his way through burgers and fries, slurps down his shake, and stares at the traffic zooming in the opposite direction. "Where are we going?" he says, voice thick with sleep and smoke. 

"Harold has a place where we can rest up." Jess sniffs her own hair and winces at the chemical tang. House fire smoke is the worst. "A shower is probably a good idea. Then you can sleep off the Xanax."

Harold has eschewed the delights of the golden arches. "Once you've had a chance to sleep, Mr…" He pauses a moment, caught on John's legal surname, then he makes a decision. "…John, we can discuss next steps."

Harold has fresh clothes waiting for John at the safehouse: tracks, jeans, sweaters and so on. John grabs the clean sweats, takes a long shower then falls asleep half dressed. Jess checks on him and drags his feet under the covers. He doesn't even stir. 

Jess closes the door and leans against it. She feels the immense distance between here and Ordos, cold and heavy on her back. Sliding to the floor is an incredible luxury. The safe house is warm, and the carpet thick. She puts her back to John's door and closes her eyes for just a moment. 

She wakes with a start when John opens the door. It's late afternoon and he's dressed, wearing crisp new jeans. He's still pale, but he gives her a small smile when she almost falls into his room. 

"You slept there?" he says.

Jess pushes herself upright and tugs her shirt straight. "Wanted to keep an eye on you." That part is true, at least.

He offers her his hand. "Thanks," he says. 

Jess pulls herself up and wraps her arms around him. While they're hugging, Jess hears John clear his throat, and she remembers she still smells like an ashtray.

"I'm going to go clean up," she says. "You okay for now?" 

"Yeah," John says. "Gonna poke around." 

When she steps out of the shower, she smells bacon. John is getting to know the kitchen.

They both know the moment Harold connects John's old number to his new phone, because it rings immediately. It's Angie, his friend from work. She's been calling for hours.

Jess eats her eggs and watches John find the words to explain to his friend that his marriage is over, that his suburban life might be, too. After a while, John stands up. He touches Jess on the shoulder, then goes to his bedroom. He stays there for nearly an hour and comes out with red-rimmed eyes, but he's smiling.

"Angie wants to come up and see me," he says. "How do I make that happen? Since you know..." He waves his finger in the air, indicating radio waves. "Your boss is security conscious." 

Jess has enough time to raise her eyebrows before John's phone rings once then switches itself on. Harold's voice comes from the speaker.

"I've made arrangements at the front desk for your friend to be admitted. Ms Reese, you may wish to make yourself scarce when she arrives, in case she recognises you. Besides, I have a matter that needs your attention."

Harold's Machine gave them a whole eighteen hours of recovery time and now they have a new number. Jess shrugs and pushes her chair back.

"You gonna be okay on your own?" 

John steals her last piece of toast. "I think I'll manage," he says. "Besides, pretty sure Harold will be keeping a close eye on me." There's the ghost of a smile there. Jess is glad to see that smile, and hear the gentle fun he's poking at Harold. Friendship between Harold and John is a good thing. It hasn't escaped Jess's notice that only one friend called John after the fire. She wonders how long he's been isolated from people who care about him. 

Jess spends the rest of the day convincing a grocery store owner not to murder the leader of a pre-teen shoplifting gang. Harold does his own time bribing the pre-teen gang into going back to school. When it's over, Jess carries a large box of Armenian pastries back to the safehouse, minus a few that she left with Harold in the library. She and John eat them for dinner, sitting cross-legged on the floor with the box between them. 

"Don't know yet if I want to go back," John says when the box is almost empty. 

Jess runs her finger around the edge of the box, chasing sugary crumbs. "You don't have to decide right now," she says. 

John shrugs. "Gonna be weird to start over after ten years." 

"Tell me about it," she says. The words are not as bitter as she expects. 

John laughs, then leans over to steal that last almond flake. She lets him win. 

The next day, John drops his name at a couple of nursing agencies, and suddenly he has more work than he can ask for. Ex-military nurses with ER experience are in high-demand.

For Jess, the numbers come at a steady rate: one every day or so, with occasional rushes and quiet days. She gets used to working with someone she can trust, gets used to sharing her living space again, gets used to living with John.

They're both polite as roommates, both military in their neatness and attention to detail. John is more stringent on food hygiene than Jess, disposing of leftover takeout days before Jess would have given up on it, and objecting strenuously to her drinking from the bottle. ("There's a glass in the cupboard less than a foot away from your head!")

It's eerily normal, and something Jess has never known. She adjusts quickly, and she wonders why this was a thing she'd dreaded all of her career. She'd mocked John, back in the Army, when he talked about settling down. It never occurred to her that she could have even aspects of a normal life, and still do work that she loved and found fulfilling. 

It's nice not to have to explain things, but still be able to slide up to someoneon the sofa and watch stupid TV. 

John doesn't discuss his work much, but Jess gets the feeling that agency work is not as satisfying as having a steady position with familiar faces, even if the money is better. Money doesn't really matter, since Harold is covering his rent, health insurance, and the expensive psychologist whose name Jess sees on envelopes sometimes.

"You could go back…" Jess trips up over the word "home" and settles for "to New Rochelle."

It's Wednesday, and they've both managed to be in the same place at dinner time. Jess drags John out to a pizzeria where they can sit in a room full of noisy diners and put their heads together to catch up over garlic bread and cheap chianti.

John shakes his head. "Angie keeps trying to convince me, but I don't know. It wouldn't feel like a clean break, if I was back there."

They haven't spoken about Peter since the week of the fire. Jess assumes Harold will tell her if he tries to contact John again.

"You're doing great," she tells John, as if she has any expertise in this. She gives him a goofy grin and steals the last slice of pizza. "You're not on the run from the CIA, for one thing." She's joking, but even in a state of emotional distress, John is steadily bringing his new life into order, much faster than Jess managed. "I'm just lucky Harold came along, or I'd still be haunting your place." 

John laughs softly and pushes the garlic bread in her direction. "He's good for you," he says. "Having back-up you can trust makes a difference."

Spring has a foothold on the city when Jess hauls herself out of bed to find John wearing a suit. It's a lovely suit in dark blue and obviously not something he chose for himself. Jess sees Harold's aesthetic in the cut and the colour. Only Harold would pick a lilac pinstripe for John. 

"Wow!" Jess grins at John and gives him a slap on the ass as she heads for the bathroom. John kicks his foot towards her butt as she passes, but she easily jumps out of his reach. 

When she comes out of the bathroom, he's still standing in front of the mirror in the dining room, collar turned up and tie limp in his hands. 

Jess laughs and takes it from him. "Ten years and ties still mess you up, huh?" She wonders who managed his bow tie at his wedding, but she'd never ask him that. Instead she slips the tie around his neck. 

"There's a reason I work in scrubs," John says. He looks over her shoulder as she adjusts the tie to the right position and starts the knot. 

"You want a half-windsor?" Jess asks. "What's the occasion?" It's a lovely tie, smooth and cool in her hands, blue and silver and grey. All John's colours.

John freezes under her hands. "Harold wants me to talk to some lawyers," he says. His voice is tight and quiet.

Jess concentrates on getting the knot perfectly in position, because she knows John well enough to recognise the sharp edges in that stillness, how close he is to fracturing. Once the tie is done, she spends a few more moments fussing. The tie-clip is cold under her fingertips. Silver, she thinks, blankly. John wanted a family so desperately. They'd fought over it, back in the Army, which was when she learned that he'd lost everyone: father, mother, sister. He had nobody. He was always going to have to build his own family. Peter has taken that chance from him. Just for a moment, she wonders if she did the right thing. 

"Harold is right," John says, eventually. He kisses the top of her head to let her know he is okay. "I can't leave things up in the air forever. I just… thought there'd be more time before I had to say the word 'divorce'."

Jess' heart aches for him, the way his voice breaks on that word. There's not much to say. Instead, she wraps him up in her arms and hugs him close.

He relaxes in her arms for a moment, then Jess feels his gaze stop on the bandage around her hands. His eyes narrow.

"It's nothing!" Jess says, and hides it behind her back. "Barbed wire. I washed it out in the shower."

This time, John is too fast for her. He feints to the left and when she steps out of his way, he grabs her injured hand and tucks it under his arm so he can tow her to the first aid kit.

Jess is sitting at the kitchen table with her hand in a bowl of antiseptic when Harold knocks, then lets himself in.

"Oh dear," he says, looking at the first aid paraphernalia spread out on the table. "The barbed wire?"

John peels open a dressing and presses it over the puncture wounds on Jess' palm. "Tetanus up to date?" he asks.

"2011," Harold says. "In London."

Jess laughs, and rests her head in the hand that isn't being dressed. She'd gotten that shot under a false name, in the middle of the night at a busy hospital. 

"Sometimes you scare me," she says. "What else do you know about me?" 

Harold is feeling sassy, because he gives her an enigmatic smile. "Oh, I know exactly everything about you, Ms Reese." 

He's happy today, Jess thinks. He should smile more often. 

"Do you have a number for me?" she asks. "Or are you escorting John to his appointments today?" She's only half joking.

Harold pulls a file out from under his arm. "Both," he says, passing it to her. "As you know, I'm a multi-tasker."

Later that day, she's scaling a construction site, heaving herself up and over a girder while keeping her eye on the man who's trying to kill her. He's a few girders above her, scrambling to get to the empty cab of a crane.

"Hey, Finch?" She jumps for the next rail, catches it with her belly and scrambles to get her feet onto it. "Those lawyers going easy on John?"

"The meetings are proceeding well so far, though I think there is an emotional toll that John is hesitant to admit to," Harold says. "We're going to stop for lunch soon. Have you convinced Mr Andersen that skimming supplies from the site is a bad idea?"

Mr Andersen lobs a wrench at Jess' head, and she has to dance to one side on the girder. The city is tiny below her, and she hears the wrench clatter against the girders as it falls thirty floors.

"Not yet," she says. "I'm working on it, though."

There's a murmured conversation on the line, and Jess hears Harold say, "I'm talking to her now, in fact. She has the situation well in hand."

Jess' foot slides on an oily patch and for a moment she struggles to regain her balance. Out of tools to throw, Mr Andersen pulls off his safety helmet and hurls it like a cannonball. They're on the same girder now, though he does have one hand on the yellow chassis of the crane. If he gets inside the cab, he'll have control of the wrecking ball, and Jess' life will be a lot more complicated.

Jess catches the helmet and returns the throw, harder and with more accuracy, striking Mr Andersen on the head. The blow knocks him out, and she has to sprint to stop him tumbling off the girder. Once they're both on solid ground she calls Detective Fusco.

"Why call me?" he says, when he arrives at the crime scene. "I'm in narcotics, not whatever the hell this is." He waves his hand at Mr Andersen, duct-taped to a wall.

Jess claps him on the shoulder, hard enough to remind him that despite her appearance, she's the scariest person he knows. "I trust you to take care of it, Lionel. You're great at fudging the numbers."

As she walks away from the construction site, Harold, who does not approve of Detective Fusco, says, "Must you continue to involve a corrupt cop in our work?" 

"It's useful to have a contact inside the NYPD, Finch." Jess has one ear cocked for background sound on the line. Is Harold still in his meeting? Is John handling the stress? "An honest cop makes a terrible asset." 

Harold makes a soft 'hmph' into his phone, which means he's irked but he hasn't constructed an adequate argument yet.

"You guys having lunch yet?" 

"We're leaving for Buvette now," he says. Jess hears traffic, then a car door opening. 

"That Jess?" John's voice is quiet. He sounds tired. "She okay?" 

"She's perfectly safe." Harold's voice becomes distant, he has his face close to John's to prevent anyone listening in.

Jess stops and checks her reflection in a store window. No blood, no cracked knuckles. She uses her elbow to scuff some mud off her pants. Decent enough for the West Village.

"Hold a seat for me," she says. "I'm done for the day." 

When Harold doesn't argue or ask her to change, she knows she's making the right call. Harold would normally prefer her to wash the debris of the day off before she sits down to dine. John must be exhausted. _At least Harold is there_ , she thinks, and that gives her pause. She trusts Harold, of course, but she hadn't realised how meticulously careful Harold is with John's feelings. He spends as much energy on making John feel comfortable as he does in keeping Jess safe. And then there's the suit. He cares for John. It makes her glow warm inside, and that's startling. When did she last feel this way? In Ordos, she wouldn't have wasted the energy on empathy. Kara would have called it a weakness, and back then, Jess would agree. Now, it feels like something to be nurtured. She carries that warmth to lunch. 

Fusco grows on Jess as the weeks pass. She doesn't want to like him; that sort of thing complicates running an asset. Also, he does try to hand her over to a drug cartel, but Jessica can't really blame him for that. He really cares about missing kids. It's endearing and frustrating at the same time. He takes to vigilante work with unexpected vigour, and Jess is oddly touched by his dedication. 

One night when they're out hunting a dirty DA, Fusco ricochets off a getaway car and slams head-first into a brick wall. Jess catches him as he reels away from the impact. Dazed, he stares unfocused at a spot two feet to Jess' left.

"Whatcha doing just standing there?" he says as he sways. "You going after those assholes or do I gotta bust my knees running now?"

He's leaning drunkenly to one side as he speaks. Jess walks a circle around him, and he staggers a few steps trying to follow her. 

_Shit,_ thinks Jess. He's not okay. 

Harold is out of contact for the next two hours while he rewires a communication tower. John's home, though, so Jess calls him. She hears the television in the background when he answers. 

"You okay?" he says, with his mouth full. 

She tightens her grip on Fusco's arm so he doesn't wander into traffic again. "I'm fine, but Fusco banged his head pretty good." 

"Is he conscious?" Jess hears him turn off the TV and get to his feet. "Is he having any double vision?" 

Jess grabs Fusco's chin. He tries to wriggle out of her grip, but he moves slowly, like he's underwater. Jess squints at his face. Are his pupils uneven? It's hard to tell. 

"Fuck off, I'm fine." Fusco's words are indistinct. 

On the phone, John says, "That doesn't sound good. Can you get him to the ER?" 

"No!" Jess and Fusco say in unison. 

"Finch'll pay," Jess says, but Fusco shakes his head. 

"A detective shows up with a concussion? It'll be on HR's desk in five minutes.You ever meet a nurse who wasn't a first class gossip?"

"Hey!" John says, offended. 

Jess watches the traffic. They really need to get off the street before someone comes to investigate. 

"I'm coming over," she says. Harold is going to be pissed, but this is the best option. It's not like Jess is bringing him to the library. "See you in ten." 

"Got it," says John. He already sounds busy. 

It's a tricky journey across town, ferrying a concussed Fusco while avoiding the police, but Jess makes it in seven minutes. 

Fusco presses his forehead to the cold metal of the elevator door. "No more walking," he says. "Just let them shoot me." 

"Come on, Fusco," Jess peels him away before the elevator opens on their floor. "We're nearly there." Ahead, she can see John standing in the hall, waiting for them. 

"How're you doing, Lionel?" John is all bedside manner, sits Fusco on the sofa and takes his pulse.

"S'nice place." Fusco might be concussed, but he's still looking around, taking in details. His clever detective brain can't be too scrambled. "Weird to think of you having stuff like lamps." 

Jess props a hip against the sofa while John slips on a pair of gloves and puts his stethoscope into his ears. "Why wouldn't I have lamps?" she says.

"Don't need lamps in the batcave." 

John snorts as he feels through Fusco's hair, looking for contusions. "She's a regular human, Lionel. She even has a toothbrush."

Jess sees a different side of John while he examines Fusco. When he's looking after her, it's someone she knows, someone who is cranky that she hurt herself again. With Fusco, he's kind but brisk, professionally distant but not cold. 

"Stop staring and get me an ice-pack," John says. 

"Yeah, give us a little privacy, will you?" Fusco must be feeling better, here with an ally. 

Jess gives him a glare, but she goes to the kitchen for ice, which John presses to Fusco's head. 

"I think you're going to live, Lionel," he says. 

"Yeah, if walking a beat didn't bust this thick skull, nothing's going to." Fusco winces as the ice makes contact. 

"Don't get too comfortable, Lionel." Jess is irked, and she doesn't know why, which only adds to her irritation. "John used to be as deadly as me, back in the day." 

"Well, almost." John grins at Lionel. "But I've moved on." 

Fusco is unfazed. "That supposed to be a surprise? Everyone you know can kill me." 

"Finch wouldn't kill you," Jess says. 

"Are you kidding me?" Fusco scoffs. "That guy knows where all the bodies are buried."

John peels the backing off a dressing and smooths it onto Fusco's forehead. "He's always seemed pretty mellow to me," he says. 

Jess and Fusco turn to stare at him in amazement.

"He is!" John says, defensive now. "When you get to know him."

That weekend, she drops home for a brief respite between numbers, and finds John packing a bag with a blanket and snacks. The kitchen smells like cinnamon, and there's a pile of muffins cooling on a rack. Jess snatches one. 

John turns, too late, to slap her hand. Jess dances out of the way, peeling the wrapper off the muffin and shoving it into her mouth. It's buttery and delicious, still warm. John is some kind of baking genius. 

"Oh, God, this is amazing." She finishes it in three bites and reaches for another, but John is ready for her and snatches the plate away.

"Lionel's kid has a Peewee game, I said I'd come keep him company." John puts the muffins into a Tupperware container Jess didn't know they owned and clicks the lid on with a definitive snap. 

Jess watches him sling the bag over his shoulder and head for the door. 

"Okay, bye!" she says. "Have a good time at the rink?" She blinks at the closed door after he leaves. "You there, Harold?" 

She's relieved when her earpiece hisses awake.

"I don't understand it either, Ms Reese," says Harold, in her ear. His voice is a little plaintive. "I suppose this friendship can do no harm. I do wish he hadn't taken all of the muffins, though. I helped him find that recipe and it was very well reviewed." 

Jess opens the refrigerator. Leftover Chinese is suddenly much less appealing. "Maybe if I get a concussion, John will make me muffins, too," she says, mournfully. 

She doesn't get a concussion; she catches a bullet. She's had worse. At least it's a through-and-through, leaving a hole in her thigh. She doesn't even feel it much until the firefight is over. By that time, watching over a hacked security feed, Harold can see the stain. 

"Ms Reese, you appear to be injured." He says these things so calmly now. Jess is proud. 

"Don't worry, Finch. If it were serious, I'd be dead by now." She jogs down the corridor. Her left shoe is squishy underfoot, and when she glances over her shoulder, she sees a single line of red footprints on the linoleum. "Though I don't feel great about leaving so much DNA behind me."

The moment she steps outside the building, she hears the sprinkler system activate, and she grins. 

Her pants are caked to her leg, too eye-catching for the subway, so she limps home to the library. The door flies open before she touches it, too energetic to be Harold. Expecting trouble, she reaches for her gun. Her hand moves slowly, dragging like a spoon through molasses. 

"Easy," says John, hands raised. 

Jess stares at him, framed by the door, standing in a place where she never expected to see anyone but Harold. The surprise makes her head spin. John leans forward and scoops her into his arms. She's so startled by this that she lets him carry her up the stairs.

"What are you doing here?" she says. "I can walk. I walked all the way home."

John sets her down on a broad wooden table that has been cleared and cleaned, then overlaid with a sheet. There's instruments and dressings laid out on the book trolley. "Yeah, but you shouldn't have," he says. "You bled all the way home, too."

Her brain is sluggish. "Harold called you," she says. "He brought you here."

Harold appears at his side. "It was a lot of blood, Ms Reese," he says. "More than I felt able to deal with."

"You do great," Jess says, loyally. "You hardly ever puke these days." She leans her head back on the pillow as John eases off her shoe. She knows she's stopped moving, but the room is still spinning gently around her. 

Harold's blush is only obvious because he is quite pale. "Must we discuss this now?" 

"Everybody pukes at the start," John says conversationally. He puts a pair of scissors to the hem of Jess' pants, and Harold squeaks in protest. John ignores him, and slits the fabric in one long movement. 

Jess reaches to pat him on the arm, but she misses. "They already had a hole in them, Harold. The line would never be up to your high standards again."

Harold squeezes her shoulder as John gets to work. Jess lies back and closes her eyes, lets the warmth of Harold's hand soak into her. Her leg hurts, but that's easy to push aside, especially when she can hear John and Harold talking softly above her. She startles awake at a burning sensation and John gives her an apologetic smile. 

"Lidocaine stings," he says, opening a suture kit. "It's worth it, though, promise." 

"Not really used to it," she says. She means to add that it's not just the anaesthetic, it's having John here, it's being able to rest safely, surrounded by people she loves. She falls asleep before she can shape the words.

After that, John is often at the library, and not just as a field medic. It's great to have an extra pair of hands, especially when those hands belong to John, who has applicable skills in many areas. Once he realises how much they like his cooking, they eat a lot less takeout. Jess thinks about that, remembers the mood in that dining room in New Rochelle. How often did Peter drop a scathing comment about John's cooking? Maybe feeding appreciative people is part of John's recovery. 

Fusco also benefits from John's cooking. Jess isn't sure how she feels about their developing friendship. She likes Fusco, but she would never let him know. Now she has to watch what she says around John. 

One evening Jess wakes up to an amazing savoury smell, so good she stumbles out of her room on only four hours sleep.

There's a pot bubbling on the stove. Jess approaches it with the trepidation of someone who has rarely cooked for herself, and she picks up the spoon sitting on the trivet beside the pot to poke it.

John appears from the hallway like a demon summoned. "Don't mess with it! It's just about done." he says. He has an arm full of groceries: packages and vegetables and fruit. Jess realises that they've been living together for three months now and she has never seen where the groceries come from.

"But it's soup," she says stupidly, still half-asleep. "You made soup. And it smells so good." Her stomach is rumbling enough to drown out the throbbing at the nape of her neck where a guy tore out a hank of hair.

John eases the groceries down onto the counter and pushes her hair back to check the wound. He dressed it earlier. "This feel okay?" he says, touching it lightly with one finger.

"Soup would make it feel better," she says, hopefully.

"Soon." John turns off the heat and reaches for more Tupperware. "This is for Lee," he says, though he ladles one bowl out for her, and slides a fresh bread roll onto a plate. 

Jess hears Harold's brief knock at the door while she's opening drawers, looking for cutlery. Harold has a paper bag from the drugstore which he passes to John, then opens the correct drawer and passes Jess a spoon. 

Jess takes her soup to the counter and watches John unpack the drugstore goods: paediatric Advil, a digital thermometer. 

"How is Lee?" Harold asks. He shakes his head at John's offer of soup, but he fills the kettle and switches it on. 

"He's doing okay. I think the fever is starting to go down." John pours the soup into a Tupperware container and wraps it in tea towels to keep it warm. 

After a few glorious mouthfuls of soup – garlic, salt, chicken, wow – Jess finally catches up with the conversation. "Who the hell is Lee?"

"Lee Fusco," Harold says. "Detective Fusco's son." 

"Poor kid has an ear infection and Lionel is losing his mind," says John."He's gonna be fine, but Lionel doesn't have a thing in the house for a sick kid."

Jess watches him put everything together. "Maybe you could cook dinner for us some time?" It comes out more plaintive than she intended. It's just that the soup is hot and delicious, and having John and Harold bustling around while she's in her pyjamas, all warm and relaxed from sleep? It's really nice.

"I can do that." John pauses to kiss her temple as he goes past. It's been like that for a while now. They're not together, as such, but a lot of old familiar gestures are falling into place again. Hugs, and easy-going kisses. Falling asleep on the sofa watching movies. It's strange and lovely to get to know John on a daily basis, rather than in moments stolen away from their military careers.

"It's probably too hard to figure out," Jess says. "I never know where I'm going to be at any given time. Can't plan."

"We usually get a day to recover when Jessica has been injured," Harold offers. He takes his tea and sits next to Jess. "You could have a picnic. That way, if something comes up, everything can be easily packed away." 

John zips up his bag, and carefully puts it over his shoulder. "You're coming too, aren't you?" He says it guilelessly, and it makes the question a challenge. 

Harold frowns at him. "I'm not really a picnic kind of person, John." 

Jess snorts into her soup. 

John and Harold stare at each other for a long moment. Eventually, Harold gives in. 

"Very well. Weather permitting. If I sit on cold ground for any length of time, you'll have to carry me home." 

John opens the front door. "Happy to oblige," he says, and closes the door behind him. 

The next day is sunny without being too hot. It rains in the night so the park is at its best: fresh and green and pleasant, dotted with patches of bright colour where other groups are sitting on blankets and enjoying the respite from the heat.

Jess picks a summer dress, leaves her hair loose, and puts on sunglasses. John wears faded jeans and a polo. He kindly agrees to let her stash her handgun in the picnic basket. 

"Do you think Harold will come?" Jess asks.

John passes her the sunscreen, then waits until she puts it on. 

"I made brownies," he says. "He'll be there." 

Harold meets them at the park, in pale linen and a matching trilby to shade his eyes. He has a bottle of wine tucked under one arm which he passes to John, then he eases himself down to sit on their blanket. 

John pours wine into paper cups and passes them around.

Jess raises her up. "Toast to a day off," she says. 

"To some warmer weather," says John. "It's been a long winter."

Harold considers his cup for a moment. "Here is to good people and to good work. Long may it continue." 

When they all take a sip, it feels like the moment just after blowing out birthday candles, when you make a wish. 

Jess sighs and drinks her wine; it's tart and sparkling, dry on the tongue, perfect for a warm day. John hands her three little pastries on a plastic plate. 

Jess raises it, breathes in rosemary, cheese, olives. "When did you have time to make these, inbetween helping Fusco with his kid?" 

John shrugs, pleased with himself, and loads Harold's plate. "When I got home last night," he says. "I had some things I wanted to try out, just didn't have a reason. Not like we're going to be throwing any dinner parties." 

"I offered to get a hamper," Harold says. "You didn't have to work all night."

"I enjoyed it," says John. "And it's not the same when you just buy the stuff." 

Jess bites into one, feels the pastry collapse into buttery flakes on her tongue. "Jesus," she says, then crams the rest of the tart into her mouth and licks her fingers. Harold eats more decorously, but still with vigour. He doesn't pause between bites to brush the crumbs from his lapels.

John grins, pleased with himself, and takes a mouthful of his own cooking. 

Jess watches him eat. She's stealthy so he doesn't get self-conscious, but she wants to remind herself that John is here, John is safe. It's not that she doubts this fact, but that allowing her mind to dwell on it feels luxurious somehow. He loves to cook, he has friends, he is slowly relaxing into this new life. It's changed the lines of his face, from something chiselled and wary to the easy-going smile she remembers from before she joined the CIA.

She can feel Harold watching her too, and she catches his gaze before he can quickly look away. He smiles at her, and for a moment, there's unspoken communication that comes from working together so closely. He's happy to be here with them, he trusts them both and cares about them. The cautious proposal he made by the fountain three months ago was worth the risk. 

John notices the lull in conversation and pauses with a baguette in hand, eyebrows raised. 

"How is Lee this morning?" Harold says, while Jess takes the bread from him and tears it into pieces. "I had measles as a boy. All my friends came to visit, and I barely had the energy to talk to them."

John is horrified. "You should have been in quarantine," he says. "What the hell?!" He passes Harold another tart, as if feeding him now will negate the lack of parental care in the past. 

"The concept was that if everyone caught it as children, it would be much less serious." Harold leans over to take a delicate bite, but pastry crumbs still scatter. 

"That's chicken pox!" John says. "Measles is always bad." He turns to Jess. "You're vaccinated, right?" 

Jess nibbles on her bread. "Ask Harold, he knows exactly everything about me." 

Harold raises his eyebrows. "It took some work to extract your childhood vaccination record, but everything is in order." 

The conversation wanes, and the noise of the park rises and falls in waves. John flops down on his back, basking in the sun, and even Jess finds she's able to relax enough to lie down on the blanket, though she doesn't close her eyes. Instead, she watches the slow progress of a bee, flying a drunken path over the short grass, visiting clover flowers one by one. 

Something flies towards them fast, and Jess is up and moving before she knows what it is. Harold is the most vulnerable, so it's him that she pulls to the ground. She covers him with her body while she assesses the situation: who's closest to the gun, where's the nearest cover and how she can get Harold to it. 

"Stand down," John murmurs, soft but abruptly enough that it cuts into her attention.

Jess looks up at him to see he's holding a bright yellow Frisbee. Two kids are running towards them. They're maybe seven and ten, two bare-legged, slightly filthy girls whose game went a little astray on a sunny day in the park. 

"Here you go," John says to them. They're shame-faced, but also looking in Jess' direction with curious expressions. She can see them wondering what's going on. Why's that lady squashing that man?

Beneath her, Harold clears his throat and pats her arm. 

"Go long!" John says, waving the Frisbee, ready to throw it back. The girls giggle and start sprinting towards their own picnic blanket where their mom is watching them carefully. John sends the Frisbee soaring over their heads.

Jess untangles herself from Harold and moves aside. 

"Are you okay?" she says to Harold. "I'm so sorry, did I hurt you?"

Harold shakes his head. "I'm fine," he says but he does accept Jess' help to right himself. When he's settled, he kisses the back of her hand and says, "Thank you."

John folds downwards with crossed legs and picks up the wine bottle. "When's the last time you were tackled by a pretty girl, Harold?" 

Harold assumes a lofty expression. "A gentleman never tells," he says, primly. 

It's just ridiculous enough to put Jess at ease. "I'm fine," she says, though her heart still thumps. "Just startled." It's all right. These are her people. 

"Okay," says John and produces the chocolate brownies.

Harold sighs happily and Jess laughs. "You have such a sweet tooth," she says. "I bet you spent your college days up to your ears in Mountain Dew bottles and candy wrappers."

"I don't appreciate your efforts to trick intelligence out of me," Harold says. He eats his brownie with a fork. More to the point: John packed cake forks just for Harold's comfort. 

Later again, Jess licks the last of the chocolate from her fingertips, feeling sleepy and sated. Harold cleans his own with a handkerchief, then produces a paperback from a pocket and props it open with one finger. He's sitting with one leg crooked upwards, the better to accommodate a full belly.

John puts a bunch of grapes in the middle of their circle for them to snack on, then lies down on the blanket and closes his eyes, unworried by the activity going on around them.

Jess can't quite relax enough to lie down again, but she puts her hands behind her and leans into them, arching her back and letting her hair fall down behind her till it touches the ground. She can practically hear the tension easing out of her spine. She's surprised her joints don't pop. The breeze has dropped away and the air feels like warm honey on her skin.

"Summer isn't far away," Harold says, off-hand. Jess watches him read; he turns the pages fast. Maybe he's read this one before. It's some science-fiction novel with a well-creased cover, and she's seen plenty of them on the library shelves. 

Ordos had been frozen when Jess fled, gutshot and alone. She arrived when New York was knee-deep in slush and snow, and for a long time it felt like she was still running. Winter melted away while she learned how to work with Harold, while they saved John from unhappiness. She's not sure exactly when her steps became sure again, but she's not running anymore. The ground is secure beneath her. She has a home and allies. 

Jess kicks off her shoes, spreads her feet wide in the grass, feels the warmth of the earth soaking into her skin. It's good to be alive.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Branwyn was this fic's doula and nanny and governess, and without her, it would never have survived to maturity. Thank you, Bran! I could not have done it without you! 
> 
> Thank you also to Lilacsigil, who listened patiently to my long and tangled ideas, and fed me and patted my back and listened to my wails, but then pushed me back to the computer to write more. 
> 
> My artist was Aragarna, and she was incredibly patient. And my art is amazing. Thank you so much, Ara! 
> 
> Title is from the poem by Dorianne Laux: [The Mysterious Human Heart in New York](https://books.google.com.au/books?id=84NTN0_Z7PwC&pg=PA65&lpg=PA65&dq=The+Mysterious+Human+Heart+in+New+York&source=bl&ots=fQPM-tuv3b&sig=ACfU3U0BRXyCtGdXjnzjT-1UFMVzcLMAhw&hl=en&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwiD-JaRlrvrAhWGaCsKHfgiDIIQ6AEwFXoECAgQAQ#v=onepage&q&f=false)


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